Photos: Atlas 5 powers NRO payload into the night

Likened to raising a cellular tower 22,300 miles high, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will put the Navy’s fourth mobile communications satellite into space to expands the rugged smartphone system to global coverage.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster, topped with a capsule carrying a dummy dubbed Mannequin Skywalker, took off Sunday from the company’s sprawling test site in West Texas on a 10-minute trip to the edge of space and back.

Arianespace’s first launch of 2020 lifted off at 4:05 p.m. EST (2105 GMT; 6:05 p.m. French Guiana time) Thursday from the Guiana Space Center on the northeastern shore of South America. An Ariane 5 rocket launched the Eutelsat Konnect and GSAT 30 communications satellite for Eutelsat and the Indian Space Research Organization.