Photos: More shots of Thursday’s Atlas 5 rocket launch

Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket will deliver a Cygnus supply ship into orbit Wednesday to begin a day-and-a-half pursuit of the International Space Station.

Seven small satellites launched aboard a Japanese Epsilon rocket Friday, including a diverse suite of tech demo payloads and a spacecraft designed to create an artificial meteor shower next year that developers say should be visible with the naked eye.

Europe’s first mission to Mercury, a quartet of Galileo navigation spacecraft, the world’s first global winds observatory, and a new European weather satellite have arrived at an equatorial launch base in French Guiana in preparation for launches in the coming months.