Photos: Delta 4 lights up the sky for night owl launch

Chinese rockets performed two satellite delivery missions in a three-hour span Wednesday, carrying a commercial Earth-imaging satellite and five mysterious surveillance payloads into orbit.

Towering more than 30 stories tall, the mobile gantry structure at the Delta 4-Heavy rocket’s launch pad at Cape Canaveral was wheeled into position for liftoff of the triple-core launcher Thursday with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

A Falcon 9 rocket powered by a reused first stage booster rolled out Tuesday to pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a day before its scheduled liftoff with an Airbus-built communications satellite designed for television broadcasts over the Americas.