Photos: Atlas 5 launches SBIRS GEO Flight 3

The U.S. Space Force announced Tuesday that it awarded $384 million in contracts to United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, giving each company two missions to launch military satellites in 2023.

China launched its second space mission in less than 24 hours Tuesday, sending a Beidou navigation satellite toward an orbital perch around 22,000 miles above Earth.

Remarkable rocketcam video footage of the Oct. 8 flight a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from California has been released to show its hitchhiker cubesat payloads shooting into orbit.