Shuttle Atlantis unwrapped ahead of public debut

Nearly a decade in the making, NASA and SpaceX have set May 27 as the target launch date for the first crewed space mission to launch into orbit from U.S. soil since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sporting human-rating upgrades such as new composite pressurant tanks briefly ignited its nine Merlin engines Thursday afternoon on a launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and SpaceX later declared the pre-launch milestone complete in preparation for a critical test flight with a commercial crew capsule as soon as late February.

A heavy-duty crane towering over launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in recent weeks has removed several large sections of a disused structure once needed to install satellites and space station modules into space shuttle cargo bays.