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

The next-to-last Delta 2 rocket is being stacked at its California launch site to take flight in January to put a civilian weather satellite into polar orbit.

SpaceX launched its first mission of the year Monday at 9:19 p.m. EST (0219 GMT Tuesday), when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral with SpaceX’s third batch of 60 Starlink broadband satellites.

NASA’s last space shuttle commander — former U.S. Navy fighter pilot Chris Ferguson — will fly Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule on its first piloted test mission to the International Space Station next year.