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

Cape Canaveral was the point of origination for the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket and the classified NROL-52 payload.

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.

The booster rocket that will launch NASA’s next-generation Orion space capsule on a two-orbit, four-hour shakedown cruise in December has been rolled to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.