Live coverage: Three Chinese astronauts return to Earth

A Japanese H-2A rocket launched from Tanegashima Island on Wednesday with the Himawari 9 weather observatory bound for a perch more than 22,000 miles above Earth to improve forecasting in the Asia-Pacific. Liftoff of the 17-story rocket from southern Japan occurred at 0620 GMT (2:20 a.m. EDT) Wednesday.

A Soyuz rocket lifted off from South America late Thursday to haul up the next two satellites for Europe’s Galileo navigation system, giving the network its ninth and 10th operational members. Launch occurred at 0208:10 GMT Friday (10:08:10 p.m. EDT Thursday).

SpaceX rolled out a Falcon 9 rocket to launch pad 39A early Tuesday for a prelaunch hotfire test before this weekend’s liftoff with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government spy satellite agency. The static fire test was completed at 3:02 p.m. (1902 GMT).