Live coverage: SpaceX launches another batch of Starlink satellites

A Japanese Epsilon rocket launched Tuesday from the Uchinoura Space Center, a shoreline spaceport on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, with a space weather research probe to study phenomena inside the turbulent Van Allen radiation belts. Liftoff of the 85-foot-tall rocket occurred at 1100 GMT (6 a.m. EST).

A Chinese Long March 4C rocket delivered into orbit Friday the Gaofen 10 Earth-imaging satellite, a likely replacement for a spacecraft lost in an August 2016 launch failure.

NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) will be the primary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launching no earlier than Sep. 23. The vehicle is joined by the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and NOAA’s Space Weather Follow-On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) observatory.