Live coverage: Ariane 5 blasts off with two Intelsat satellites

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:47 p.m. PDT (4:47 p.m. EDT; 2047 GMT) Monday with a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.

An experimental microsatellite built and owned by Astro Digital, a California-based company, rode Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket into orbit at 9:22 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0122 GMT Thursday) from New Zealand.

Moving closer toward launch Monday with a South Korean communications satellite, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired its nine Merlin main engines Thursday on a launch pad in Florida in a key preflight readiness test.