Photos: Atlas 5/MMS launch gallery

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket with the next batch of 60 Starlink internet satellites at 3:13 a.m. EST (0813 GMT) Thursday from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The reusable first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Thursday carrying the U.S. Air Force’s first GPS 3-series navigation satellite destined for an orbit more than 12,000 miles above Earth.

A Soyuz rocket carrying a Russian commander, a NASA co-pilot and a United Arab Emirates guest cosmonaut blasted off from Kazakhstan Wednesday, chased down the International Space Station and glided in for a picture-perfect docking, kicking off an unprecedented end-of-year schedule that includes up to a dozen spacewalks.