Shuttle Atlantis unwrapped ahead of public debut

SpaceX’s first human-rated Crew Dragon spacecraft took off Saturday from historic launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, launching NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on the first piloted orbital space mission from a U.S. spaceport in nearly a decade.

Tracking information released by the U.S. military indicates two government payloads rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit Dec. 19 on the NROL-108 mission, a dedicated launch for the National Reconnaissance Office.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to take off Thursday from Florida’s Space Coast with a secret cargo for the National Reconnaissance Office, which broke with standard practice to procure the launch commercially, outside of the government’s established contracting schemes.