Crew-5 LC-39A
SpaceX conducted a static-fire test Oct. 2 of the Falcon 9 that will launch the Crew-5 mission. At right is infrastructure SpaceX is building there to host Starship launches.

As SpaceX prepares to launch a new crew to the International Space Station from one pad at the Kennedy Space Center, it is starting work to upgrade another pad at Cape Canaveral as a backup.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...