Live coverage: SpaceX launches another batch of Starlink satellites

Rising into a midnight sky lit by the full moon, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral early Monday with a commercial cargo craft on the way to the International Space Station, then returned to Florida’s Space Coast for a dramatic nighttime landing.

The 54 national security missions will be awarded over the course of five years spanning FY25-FY29. The U.S. Space Force said missions are anticipated to fly from FY27-FY32.

A Proton rocket and Block DM upper stage climbed into space Saturday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with Spektr-RG, an astronomical observatory with dual X-ray telescopes developed by Russian and German scientists on the hunt for the signature of dark energy.