Cold weather in Cape Canaveral prompted administrators to delay a crucial dress rehearsal for the launch. That leaves Artemis II with a narrower window to launch in February.

Live updates from SpaceX’s Friday morning Starlink 6-101 mission that launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The rollout on Saturday, Jan. 17, of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is a crucial step signaling that NASA is in the final stretches to get its first crewed lunar mission in five decades off the ground. That mission, known as Artemis 2, will send three Americans and one Canadian on a 10-day trip around the moon.

The Pentagon for decades has treated launch as the central logistical problem of military space. Once a satellite reaches orbit, it is expected to operate with the fuel it carries from Earth until it fails or runs dry.

SpaceX launched an advanced, jam-resistant GPS satellite for the U.S. Space Force from Florida on Tuesday night (Jan. 27).