Shuttle Atlantis unwrapped ahead of public debut

An upgraded version of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo freighter launched Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, loaded with 3.2 tons of supplies and experiments in the first of at least nine resupply flights to the International Space Station under a new NASA contract.

SpaceX started the week with the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after sunrise Monday, delivering a classified U.S. government spy satellite to orbit as the booster’s first stage returned to Cape Canaveral for a vertical landing.

Running through a practice countdown and hold-down engine firing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket passed a key checkpoint Thursday ahead of liftoff next week with the U.S. Air Force’s fifth X-37B spaceplane flight, a mission that will come with several firsts.