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

Launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base on California’s Central Coast on its third try, United Launch Alliance’s Delta 2 rocket lifted off Saturday with NOAA’s JPSS 1 polar-orbiting weather satellite.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 12:26 p.m. PDT (3:26 p.m. EDT; 1926 GMT) Friday with another batch of 52 Starlink internet satellites. The mission is the first of two SpaceX launches scheduled Friday, with another Falcon 9 poised for liftoff from Florida a little more than four hours later.

Revisit Friday night’s blastoff of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral with SBIRS GEO Flight 4, the fourth in an upgraded line of U.S. Air Force missile detection and warning satellites.