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

An airport-like viewing tower standing up to 30 stories tall is the centerpiece of SpaceX’s planned rocket refurbishment and operations base proposed for vacant land at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A European Vega rocket lifted off Tuesday from the Guiana Space Center on the northern shoreline of South America with a high-resolution reconnaissance satellite for the Moroccan government. Launch occurred at 8:42:31 p.m. EST Tuesday (0142:31 GMT Wednesday) from Kourou, French Guiana.

Fresh off a series of three complex spacewalks to repair a $2 billion cosmic ray detector, the International Space Station’s crew is set to receive two robotic resupply freighters in the next week after launches from Florida’s Space Coast and the steppes of Kazakhstan.