Watch a 4K video replay of Falcon Heavy’s static fire test (members only)

For the first time in nearly four years, a rocket successfully shot into orbit from Israel on Monday with a military reconnaissance satellite to shore up the country’s space-based capability to surveil Iran and other adversaries.

Japan’s regional satellite navigation network, conceived to improve GPS coverage over Japanese territory, received its fourth member Monday with an on-target H-2A rocket launch.

A normally reliable Soyuz FG rocket malfunctioned two minutes after liftoff from Kazakhstan Thursday, forcing a Russian cosmonaut and his NASA crewmate to execute an emergency abort and a steep-but-safe return to Earth a few hundred miles from the launch site. Russian recovery crews reported the crew came through the ordeal in good shape.