Photos: California’s predawn liftoff of Atlas 5 rocket

Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rocket will take about 11 minutes to place NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, satellite into a roughly 357-mile-high (575-kilometer) orbit after an airborne launch off Florida’s east coast.

Hobbyists who keep track of the skies with remarkable precision have found the U.S. Air Force’s mini space shuttle in its no-longer-secret orbit around the Earth.

A U.S.-built commercial communications craft owned by Intelsat and a new node for Europe’s laser data relay satellite network rocketed into orbit Tuesday from Kourou, French Guiana, on top of an Ariane 5 rocket.