Photos: Launch boosts satellite for U.S. allies

Early Friday morning, the 8-million-pound mobile service tower was retracted from around the Atlas 5 rocket, revealing the 189-foot-tall vehicle for liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, carrying the commercial WorldView 4 Earth-imaging satellite.

A Soyuz rocket, with the help of a Fregat upper stage, delivered an Egyptian Earth observation satellite into a polar orbit at an altitude of more than 400 miles Thursday, overcoming an apparent technical problem after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, according to Russian news reports.

SpaceX called off the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday to make sure the booster’s supply of super-chilled cryogenic liquid oxygen is cold enough to support the delivery of the 5.8-ton SES 9 commercial communications satellite to an orbit nearly 25,000 miles above Earth.