Photos: Atlas 5 delivers success on 70th Launch

The scheduled launch Saturday of two commercial BlackSky Earth-imaging satellites from New Zealand will double as an opportunity for Rocket Lab to test an enhanced heat shield on its Electron booster, an upgrade that should allow the company to recover rockets in better condition for eventual reuse.

Four magnetic explosion probes in a towering stack atop an Atlas 5 rocket rode a fountain of flame off the launch pad and into Earth orbit Thursday night for a $1.1 billion NASA science investigation into a universal force of nature.

A geodetic surveying satellite for the Russian military successfully launched Friday aboard a Rockot booster — a modified ballistic missile — from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.