Shuttle Atlantis unwrapped ahead of public debut

Look back on last week’s liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, capping a busy two weeks for the launch company with a successful satellite deployment flight for Intelsat.

Atlantis blasted off on May 11, 2009 for the final space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, a dramatic flight that prepared the iconic observatory for a new revolution of discovery

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, heading due east over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver the Es’hail 2 communications satellite into orbit around 32 minutes later.