Live coverage: Delta 2 launches

NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite blasts off aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket Saturday, launching into orbit on a three-year mission to measure moisture levels in Earth’s soils.

SpaceX launched 57 Starlink broadband satellites and a pair of Earth observation smallsats for BlackSky on top of a Falcon 9 rocket at 1:12 a.m. EDT (0512 GMT) Friday. The 90th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket took off from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX rolled a fully-assembled Falcon 9 booster out of its hangar and lifted it on top of a launch pad Friday for the first time since an explosion grounded the commercial rocket last year, setting the stage for a one-second launch window Saturday to take off from California’s Central Coast and deploy the first 10 satellites in orbit for a $3 billion upgrade to Iridium’s globe-spanning message relay network.