Photos: Atlas 5 rocket soars from West Coast

The fourth and last spacecraft in BlackSky’s initial flock of commercial Earth-imaging microsatellites successfully launched Monday aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket with three other payloads, setting the stage for the final assembly and launch of at least 20 more BlackSky orbiting surveillance platforms starting later this year.

President Trump reestablished U.S. Space Command in a White House ceremony Thursday, setting up a unified combatant command previously dissolved in 2002 that Trump said “will defend America’s vital interests in space” amid growing threats to space assets and services.

A Long March 4B rocket successfully launched an oceanography satellite Wednesday from northwestern China, hours before officials at a different spaceport scrubbed the planned launch of a cargo ship to deliver supplies to the Chinese space station.