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

Officials have accepted a Friday launch date for a commercial cargo ship to the International Space Station after Range availability scuttled notions of moving up the Atlas 5 flight by a day.

Rocket Lab launched a radar imaging satellite Tuesday for the Japanese company Synspective. The small Earth observation payload lifted off from New Zealand at 5:09 a.m. EST (1009 GMT) aboard an Electron rocket. Rocket Lab did not attempt to recover the Electron’s first stage on this mission.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is set to roll to its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral, a day before liftoff with a new-generation NOAA weather satellite. The launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a Spanish communications satellite is expected to be shuffled after the Atlas 5 flight in a rapid-fire launch sequence at the Florida spaceport this week.