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

A layer of fog intruding on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California kept nearby observers from seeing any sign of Saturday’s predawn launch of an Atlas 5 rocket carrying a robotic NASA probe to Mars. The only images of the Atlas 5’s fiery takeoff came from remote cameras placed at the launch pad, or from distant viewing points away from the poor visibility.

Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule accomplished an early at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 7:58 a.m. EST (5:58 a.m. MST; 1258 GMT) Sunday to conclude an abbreviated two-day unpiloted test flight after a timing error on the spacecraft shortly after launch prevented it from linking up with the International Space Station as planned.

Three of Planet’s SkySat Earth-imaging satellites are mounted on top of 58 of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellites for launch Saturday from Cape Canaveral on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, the first secondary payloads to ride to orbit on SpaceX’s commercial rideshare service.