Q&A with Dan Hart, president and CEO of Virgin Orbit (members only)

A Soyuz rocket delivered a Russian military intelligence satellite to orbit Thursday after lift off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia’s far northern Arkhangelsk region, the first flight of a Soyuz variant since an aborted crew launch earlier this month.

A package of communications and tech demo satellites for the U.S. Air Force rode a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket into an orbit more than 20,000 miles over the equator after liftoff from Cape Canaveral Saturday evening.

A small spacecraft built for the Russian military lifted off Thursday on top of a modified Soyuz booster, beginning a mission to reportedly test a compact Earth-imaging platform that could be used on future spy satellites.