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

Views from an airliner, close-up high-speed launch pad cameras, and photographers around the Guiana Space Center in the jungle of South America show the twilight launch of a European Ariane 5 rocket Saturday with three commercial satellites heading for orbits more than 22,000 miles over the equator.

Watch the pre-flight news conference that introduces NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on Sept. 8. It will capture a sample of Asteroid Bennu for return to Earth.

The oldest Falcon 9 booster in SpaceX’s operational rocket fleet sent 60 more Starlink internet satellites into space Tuesday with a launch from historic pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.