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

SpaceX trucked its Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft — refurbished with a new heat shield and structural enhancements — across the Cape Canaveral spaceport this week for attachment to a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of a planned liftoff next Thursday with four astronauts heading to the International Space Station.

The third in a new series of Chinese high-resolution mapping satellites lifted off Saturday aboard a Long March 2D rocket, joining two other craft launched into similar orbits in December.

SpaceX’s third Falcon Heavy rocket is set for liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the heavy-lift launcher will head on an easterly course over the Atlantic Ocean atop more than 5 million pounds of thrust.