Shuttle Atlantis unwrapped ahead of public debut

The last space shuttle external tank in existence, headed from the New Orleans manufacturing plant to the California Science Center for the vertical launch pad display of the retired orbiter Endeavour, has passed through the Panama Canal.

An official weather outlook issued by U.S. Air Force meteorologists Thursday calls for partly cloudy skies on Florida’s Space Coast for liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket just after sunrise Sunday with a clandestine payload for the U.S. government’s intelligence agencies.

Follow the key events of the Falcon 9 rocket’s ascent to orbit with 60 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network.