Photos: EchoStar 19 launch as seen from press site

SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets in a span of a little more than four hours Friday, a record-setting day that began with the launch of 52 Starlink internet satellites from California and ended with the sunset liftoff of two SES television broadcast payloads from Florida.

Two million pounds of firepower successfully launched a behemoth Delta 4-Heavy rocket and a top-secret eavesdropping surveillance satellite into space Saturday, embarking on a taxing climb directly into geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the Earth to deploy one of the pinnacles of U.S. intelligence-gathering.

A Soyuz rocket took off from a cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East and deployed 36 Florida-built OneWeb internet satellites into orbit Thursday. Another batch of OneWeb satellites will launch next month, continuing the build-out of a planned fleet of 648 spacecraft to provide global broadband services.