Photos: Delta 4 rocket fires off the pad before sunset

SpaceX’s next launch of satellites for the company’s Starlink broadband network — planned in the final days of 2019 — will carry one spacecraft with an experimental coating designed to make it less reflective in orbit, a first step in assuaging concerns from scientists who say the deployment of thousands more Starlink stations would impede some astronomical observations.

Rocket Lab’s second launch from Virginia took off at 6:38 p.m. EDT (2238 GMT) Thursday. The company’s carbon fiber Electron small satellite launcher carried two commercial radar remote sensing satellites into orbit for Capella Space.

Ten Iridium communications satellites rode a Falcon 9 rocket into orbit Friday from California in the eighth and final launch for Iridium’s upgraded network over the last two years, and the first of around 18 predicted SpaceX missions planned in 2019.