Photos: Ariane 5 on its jungle launch pad with navigation payloads

The U.S. Air Force this week awarded SpaceX a contract to launch a Global Positioning System satellite in early 2019, concluding the second of as many as 15 competitions the military plans to run over the next year to pit SpaceX against United Launch Alliance for rights to lift defense and intelligence-gathering payloads into orbit.

Completing an October to remember, the third Atlas 5 rocket launch in just 29 days thundered into space Saturday, this time to replace an aging satellite in the Global Positioning System.

A European Vega rocket crashed back to Earth shortly after launching from French Guiana carrying a Spanish land imaging satellite and a French research probe with a combined value of nearly $400 million.