Live coverage: Orion lands in Pacific

A solid-fueled Minotaur 4 rocket lifted off from Wallops Island, Virginia at 9:46 a.m. EDT (1346 GMT) Wednesday. The four-stage rocket, comprised of retired Peacekeeper missile parts, launched on a mission to deliver four classified payloads into orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Four astronauts flying on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Resilience” spacecraft reached the International Space Station late Monday, one day after launching from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The capsule autonomously docked with the space station at 11:01 p.m. EST Monday (0401 GMT Tuesday).

Rocket Lab launched a radar imaging satellite Tuesday for the Japanese company Synspective. The small Earth observation payload lifted off from New Zealand at 5:09 a.m. EST (1009 GMT) aboard an Electron rocket. Rocket Lab did not attempt to recover the Electron’s first stage on this mission.