Time-lapse: Falcon 9 lifted vertical on pad 39A (members only)

A light-class Electron launcher built and owned by Rocket Lab fired into orbit Thursday (U.S. time) from a privately-owned spaceport in New Zealand with a top secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.

The SpaceX launch team fired the Falcon 9 main engines at pad 39A today as a readiness test for next week’s Inmarsat satellite deployment flight.

Three space station fliers floated into their Soyuz ferry craft, undocked from the lab complex and plunged back to Earth Friday, making a rare nighttime landing in snowy Kazakhstan to close out a 141-day stay in orbit.