Video: Atlas 5 rolls out to launch pad with the Air Force’s AEHF 5 comsat (members only)

A solid-fueled small satellite launcher named Jielong 1 fired into orbit Saturday on its first flight from northwestern China, debuting a new rocket developed by a spinoff of China’s state-owned launch vehicle manufacturer using a “commercial business model.”

SpaceX crews at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California rolled out a Falcon 9 rocket and lifted it vertical atop its launch pad ahead of a planned blastoff Wednesday with a Spanish radar observation satellite and two test probes for a planned global broadband Internet network.

After a terminal countdown abort Sunday night, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket with the next 60 Starlink internet satellites Thursday at 3:24 a.m. EST (0824 GMT). The Falcon 9 took off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, and its first stage booster successfully landed on SpaceX’s offshore drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.