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

Rocket Lab launched an Electron rocket from New Zealand at 9:20 p.m. EST Thursday (0220 GMT Friday) carrying 30 small payloads into low Earth orbit. The company said the first stage of the Electron rocket splashed down in the Pacific Ocean under a parachute, a major step in Rocket Lab’s rocket reuse program.

Gearing up for a predawn blastoff July 31, launch crews have positioned a Delta 4-Heavy rocket in the starting blocks on a seaside launch complex at Cape Canaveral as engineers inside a tightly-controlled clean room a few miles away put the final touches on a NASA probe that will travel closer to the sun than any mission before.

Riding a column of red-hot rocket exhaust, an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle fired into orbit Wednesday with a replacement satellite for the country’s home-grown navigation network.