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

The European Space Agency has reserved an Ariane launcher to send a spacecraft toward Jupiter in May 2022, and the mission’s project manager said Tuesday officials could assign the probe to Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket, assuming the vehicle has a successful debut by the end of 2020.

Rocket Lab’s light-class Electron launcher is set to take off on its fifth flight from New Zealand, aiming for a 264-mile-high (425-kilometer) orbit with DARPA’s R3D2 technology demonstration satellite.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, with 51 small satellites, hosted payloads, and orbital transfer vehicles heading into polar orbit on the Transporter 7 mission. Liftoff occurred at 11:48 p.m. PDT Friday (2:48 a.m. EDT; 0648 UTC Saturday).