Photos: Atlas 5 powers NRO payload into the night

An Ariane 5 rocket delivered a robotic space tug and a pair of commercial communications satellites into orbit Saturday following a fiery blastoff from French Guiana, debuting new upgrades in Arianespace’s first mission since temporarily suspending launch operations earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Loaded onto a SpaceX recovery ship, the Crew Dragon capsule that performed a successful in-flight abort test Sunday over Florida’s Space Coast pulled into Port Canaveral hours later after being retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean.

The planned liftoff Thursday of an Indian Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle with a geostationary Earth-imaging satellite has been postponed due to technical reasons, India’s space agency announced.