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

A Chinese television broadcasting satellite lifted off Saturday aboard a Long March 3B booster, the 300th orbital launch by the country’s Long March rocket family since 1970.

Two days after blasting off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, SpaceX’s refurbished Dragon supply ship arrived at the International Space Station on Monday with nearly 6,000 pounds of experiments and equipment. Grapple of Dragon by the station’s robot arm occurred at 9:52 a.m. EDT (1352 GMT).

An Atlas 5 rocket carrying a classified national security satellite was rolled to the launch pad this morning for Thursday’s flight to bolster the U.S. intelligence-gathering space architecture.