Q&A with Emiliano Kargieman, founder and CEO of Satellogic (members only)

China launched a polar-orbiting weather satellite Friday to take data on the atmosphere and seas, state media announced, but Chinese officials offered little detail on the craft’s mission.

SpaceX’s first partially-assembled Starship vehicle, originally built for atmospheric test flights, ruptured in dramatic fashion Wednesday during a cryogenic loading test at the company’s launch facility in South Texas.

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).