Photos: Falcon takes flight

Air Force ground controllers have activated service aboard the newest Global Positioning System satellite, achieving that milestone for the final spacecraft in a dozen built in a manufacturing batch to update the constellation.

Although recovery teams in the Atlantic Ocean have retrieved wreckage from Sunday’s Falcon 9 launch failure, the best clues to the cause of the crash lie in raw data transmitted from the rocket as it disintegrated, SpaceX officials said Wednesday.

A Spanish-owned, U.S.-built commercial communications satellite climbed into orbit early Tuesday from Cape Canaveral on the 50th flight of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launching on a 15-year mission to relay video, data and broadband signals across the Americas, Europe and North Africa.