Watch NASA’s STP-2 technology briefing

SpaceX launched its 12th Falcon 9 rocket of the year Thursday from California with Taiwan’s Formosat 5 Earth observation satellite. The two-stage rocket lifted off at 11:51 a.m. PDT (2:51 p.m. EDT; 1851 GMT) and deployed the Taiwanese-built spacecraft into polar orbit. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster successfully landed on a drone ship downrange in the Pacific Ocean.

Three days after launching from Cape Canaveral, SpaceX’s Dragon cargo craft has arrived at the International Space Station with around 5,600 pounds of supplies and experiments. The automated, unpiloted supply ship was snared by the station’s robotic arm at 7:21 a.m. EST (1221 GMT) Saturday.

An Ariane 5 rocket fired off a launch pad in French Guiana Tuesday with nearly 3 million pounds of thundering thrust, heading to orbit with India’s heaviest satellite designed to expand broadband coverage across the South Asian nation, and a South Korean weather satellite carrying an U.S.-built imager to track storms and cyclones across the Asia-Pacific.