Photos: Falcon takes flight

Joining other established commercial geostationary satellite operators looking at fleets of communications platforms in low Earth orbit, Eutelsat announced Thursday it will launch a small testbed next year as a precursor to a potential network of data relay craft flying a few hundred miles above the planet.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket disintegrated shortly after launch from Cape Canaveral on Sunday, dealing a blow to the entrepreneurial space company and NASA’s supply chain to the International Space Station.

An Ariane 5 rocket will fire into the sky from French Guiana just after sunset Wednesday and deliver nearly 12 tons of payload to an orbit reaching 22,000 miles up less than a half-hour later.