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

The 200th Atlas-Centaur rocket, history some 52 years in the making, will blast off Tuesday from Cape Canaveral to deliver a U.S. Navy mobile communications satellite into orbit.

The debut launch of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from a privately-operated base in New Zealand made it to space Thursday, proving the performance of major parts of the booster before faltering short of the velocity it needed to enter orbit, the company said in a statement.

The first Soyuz launch from Kazakhstan carrying a full load of more than 30 Florida-built satellites for OneWeb’s broadband Internet network has slipped from December to mid-to-late January, OneWeb officials said.