Time-lapse: The Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon roll to the launch pad (members only)

A new Chinese launch vehicle, the Long March 8, has successfully placed five payloads into orbit on its first mission, debuting an expendable booster intended to eventually be outfitted for recovery and reuse.

A new Chinese mobile communications satellite launched Thursday on top of a Long March 3B rocket, joining a similar spacecraft launched four years ago to provide voice and data services to users on the go.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT) to begin a three-and-a-half hour mission to deliver two dozen satellites into three distinct orbits. The Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters returned to Cape Canaveral for successful landings, but the center core stage crashed during a landing attempt on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.