Photos: New GPS navigation satellite powered from Earth

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk tweeted Friday that his red Tesla Roadster will head for deep space on the maiden flight of the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket as soon as next month, and do it to the tune of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

An Ariane 5 rocket will fire into the sky from French Guiana Thursday evening and deliver a record heavyweight payload to orbit less than an hour later.

A Chinese-built telecom satellite for Algeria successfully launched Sunday aboard a Long March 3B rocket, heading toward a perch more than 22,000 miles over the equator to provide television broadcasts, broadband Internet, remote education and emergency communications services.