Photos: Falcon takes flight

SpaceX flew 18 payloads to a mid-inclination orbit including an intelligence-gathering satellite for the military of South Korea. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 1:09 a.m. EDT (0509 UTC).

A European-built Ariane 5 rocket rolled out to a launch pad in the South American jungle Wednesday with a pair of commercial television broadcast satellites for AT&T and Eutelsat, setting the stage for liftoff Thursday evening.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 11:02 p.m. PDT Tuesday (2:02 a.m. EDT; 0602 UTC Wednesday) with another batch of 52 Starlink internet satellites.