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

A Northrop Grumman Antares rocket, upgraded to carry heavier payloads into orbit, lifted off Saturday from a launch pad on Virginia’s Eastern Shore with a Cygnus supply ship in pursuit of the International Space Station with fresh food, a collection of biological and technology demonstration experiments, a zero-g baking oven, and repair gear for an aging $2 billion particle physics experiment.

One of the two Falcon 9 rockets SpaceX planned to take off in a span of less than five hours earlier this week will remain grounded indefinitely, preventing Cape Canaveral from hosting two launches on the same day for the first time in decades. But the military-run Eastern Range was ready for the back-to-back missions, and probably won’t have to wait long for the next chance for a launch doubleheader.

A solid-fueled satellite launcher backed by a Chinese start-up named LandSpace fired away from the Jiuquan space center in the Gobi Desert Saturday on its inaugural flight, but the rocket failed to place its microsatellite payload into orbit.