Photos: Delta 2 rocket blasts off with SMAP satellite

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket rolled out of its hangar and up the ramp to pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, then was raised vertical at the seaside launch complex early Monday in preparation for a late-night liftoff with two dozen weather observation and technology demonstration satellites.

A Soyuz spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station on Thursday to bring home NASA flight engineer Jessica Meir, astronaut Andrew Morgan and Russian commander Oleg Skripochka. The Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft departed the station at 9:53 p.m. Thursday (0153 GMT Friday) and landed on the steppes of Kazakhstan at 1:16 a.m. EDT (0516 GMT).

A companion to the world’s most powerful private Earth-imaging satellite rocketed into space today from the U.S. west coast atop an Atlas 5 to double the amount of high-resolution imagery available on the commercial market and satisfy the demands of customers clamoring for more.