STS-133 onboard camera launch video

A new European satellite carrying instruments to track changes in the world’s oceans, measure receding ice sheets and chart vegetation growth climbed into orbit Wednesday on top of a Russian Rockot launcher.

SpaceX crews at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California rolled out a Falcon 9 rocket and lifted it vertical atop its launch pad ahead of a planned blastoff Wednesday with a Spanish radar observation satellite and two test probes for a planned global broadband Internet network.

NASA and Northrop Grumman managers at the Kennedy Space Center decided Tuesday to press ahead with final preparations to launch a NASA scientific research satellite early Wednesday aboard an air-launched Pegasus XL rocket off Florida’s east coast.