Video: Liftoff of Delta 4 rocket and WGS 8 satellite

The final flight of a Delta 2 rocket, a mainstay of the U.S. launch industry for nearly 30 years, began at 6:02 a.m. PDT (9:02 a.m. EDT; 1302 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with NASA’s ICESat 2 Earth science satellite.

On the eve of the launch of his country’s first communications satellite on a Falcon 9 rocket, the chief executive of BulgariaSat credited SpaceX’s cost-cutting ways with making space accessible for small nations and money-conscious companies like his own.

The final flight of a discontinued version of Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket added four more spacecraft to Europe’s Galileo navigation constellation Wednesday, giving the multibillion-euro network enough satellites to remain on track for the start of full global service in 2020.