Live coverage: Vega rocket blasts off from French Guiana on commercial flight

A pair of Air Force surveillance satellites headed to geosynchronous orbit today to reconnoiter the high ground, departing Cape Canaveral aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket at 12:52 a.m. EDT (0452 GMT). It is the 375th Delta rocket flight since 1960.

A Chinese Long March 4C rocket failed to place its top secret military payload into orbit Wednesday after a launch from the Taiyuan space base southwest of Beijing, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 rocket arrived at Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A on Thursday for a hold-down engine firing ahead of launch next week with the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane. The brief engine ignition occurred at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT).