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

A rocket booster SpaceX used to launch a planet-hunting NASA observatory two months ago fired again Saturday at Cape Canaveral, clearing a major pre-flight checkout before blastoff June 29 with a space station supply ship.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket departed Cape Canaveral at 11:36 a.m. EDT (1536 GMT) to deploy the Global Positioning System 2F-10 navigation satellite.

Taking another step toward flying space tourists to the edge of space, Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin again flew its New Shepard suborbital booster Thursday with a package of microgravity research experiments.