Video: Falcon 9 fires engines at pad 39A ahead of Es’hail 2 launch (members only)

A billion-dollar U.S. military satellite rode a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket into orbit Friday night from Cape Canaveral, joining a network of space sentinels warning of threatening missile launches from North Korea, or any other place on the globe.

Virgin Orbit completed a captive carry flight of its liquid-fueled air-launched rocket Sunday over the Pacific Ocean in what the company described as its final development test before the small satellite launcher’s first mission to space.

Taking a lesson from a launch mishap last June, SpaceX wrote coded commands for future Dragon cargo capsules to deploy their parachutes for an emergency landing in the event of rocket failures, starting with Friday’s resupply flight to the International Space Station.