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

A Chinese rocket placed three experimental military surveillance satellites in orbit Friday, the second set of related triplets launched in less than two months.

A European Vega rocket deployed six commercial satellites in orbit, including a new Airbus-built eye-in-the-sky for high-resolution Earth-imaging, on a successful launch from French Guiana on Wednesday night after two of the last three Vega missions failed.

Relive all of the steps to stack the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral’s Vertical Integration Facility for the Morelos 3 satellite deployment mission.