A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday night with the U.S. Air Force’s eighth Wideband Global SATCOM communications satellite, lighting up the sky in these images taken from the nearby Kennedy Space Center press site.

Firefly Aerospace is asking academic institutions, startup companies and the public to submit ideas for payloads to launch, free of charge, on the inaugural orbital flight of the company’s Alpha rocket next year from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifted off at 11:10 a.m. PST (2:10 p.m. EST; 1910 GMT) Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, after a month-long delay to troubleshoot a hydrogen leak in one of its boosters. The heavy-lifter was on a mission to send a U.S. government spy satellite into orbit.