Video: Falcon 9 launch replays

China successfully launched a Gaofen optical observation satellite Sunday toward a perch more than 22,000 miles over the equator, where it will use an Earth-facing telescope to collect remote sensing images, Chinese state media said.

A pair of Earth-imaging satellites for the Italian military and a French-Israeli environmental monitoring project lifted off from French Guiana aboard a European Vega rocket at 0158:33 GMT Wednesday (9:58:33 p.m. EDT Tuesday).

Tuesday is shaping up to be a busy day for SpaceX, with liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a space weather satellite, an experimental booster flyback maneuver to test reusable launch technologies, and the splashdown of a Dragon capsule returning from the International Space Station.