A pair of Earth-imaging satellites for the Italian military and a French-Israeli environmental monitoring project lifted off from French Guiana aboard a European Vega rocket at 0158:33 GMT Wednesday (9:58:33 p.m. EDT Tuesday).
A miniature cargo return vehicle carried aboard a Japanese supply ship splashed down in the Pacific Ocean earlier this month in the first test of a new capsule to bring home experiment samples from the International Space Station.