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

Hours after arriving in orbit, Dragon astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken completed their first manual flight test using touchscreen controls on the SpaceX’s new crew capsule, and revealed “Endeavour” as the name of their ship.

The constellation-building Atlas 5 rocket from United Launch Alliance successfully deployed the fifth communications spacecraft for the Navy’s Mobile User Objective System today to form a new rugged smartphone network for the U.S. military.

The second test flight of Rocket Lab’s privately-developed Electron satellite booster could take off from New Zealand as soon as Friday night, U.S. time, after technical problems and high winds kept the rocket grounded during a series of launch attempts in December.