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

The first in NOAA’s new series of polar-orbiting weather satellites has been lifted atop United Launch Alliance’s second-to-last Delta 2 rocket on a launch pad in California, ready for encapsulation and final checkouts ahead of a predawn launch set for Nov. 10.

A pair of innovative satellites for ViaSat and Eutelsat, valued at approximately $800 million, are scheduled to lift off Thursday on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana, hauling the heaviest and costliest commercial payload ever launched.

SpaceX’s next launch of satellites for the company’s Starlink broadband network — planned in the final days of 2019 — will carry one spacecraft with an experimental coating designed to make it less reflective in orbit, a first step in assuaging concerns from scientists who say the deployment of thousands more Starlink stations would impede some astronomical observations.