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

These photos show the 215-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft at launch pad 39A, ready for liftoff from Florida’s Space Coast on a critical test flight to the International Space Station.

NOAA’s new JPSS 1 weather satellite deployed from its Delta 2 launcher in an orbit more than 500 miles above Earth nearly one hour after blasting off from California.

A test-firing of a twice-flown Falcon 9 booster Friday at Cape Canaveral paved the way for SpaceX’s next launch, scheduled for Monday night with a heavyweight Boeing-built communications satellite to beam broadband signals to Japan and the Pacific islands.