Live coverage: SpaceX launches 52 Starlink satellites from California

Soaring in fine fashion before daybreak, a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket maneuvered a new spy satellite into a unique retrograde orbit Wednesday morning to join an expanding constellation of radar-imaging spacecraft.

A United Launch Atlas 5 rocket is set to loft three military satellites for the U.S. Air Force on a mission codenamed AFSPC 11. This timeline shows the major mission events planned over a six-hour flight to a near-geostationary orbit.

Rocket Lab announced this week it has added two more nanosatellites to the first operational launch of the company’s Electron rocket, which is now scheduled to take off from New Zealand no earlier than Nov. 10, U.S. time, after a multi-month delay to resolve a technical problem.