Photos: Spectacular start to Delta 4-Heavy’s satellite deployment mission

The Air Force’s robotic X-37B mini space shuttle swooped out of obscurity today after 718 days spent in orbit on a secretive military mission, touching down at the Kennedy Space Center’s orbiter runway on autopilot, the military announced on Twitter.

SpaceX’s fifth Falcon 9 launch in a little more than three weeks delivered 52 more Starlink internet satellites and two small hitchhiker payloads to orbit after a booming blastoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday evening.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket climbed away from Cape Canaveral early Sunday, and its first stage booster returned to a drone ship parked in the Atlantic Ocean after sending a heavyweight commercial communications satellite toward orbit for Telesat.