Live coverage: H-2A rocket lifts off from Japan with navigation satellite

Twin satellites for Europe’s Galileo navigation system were raised on top of a Russian-made Soyuz rocket late Tuesday and installed for Friday’s launch from French Guiana to expand the growing network of spacecraft nearly 15,000 miles above Earth.

A European environmental satellite designed to monitor Earth’s oceans, lakes and vegetation lifted off Wednesday aboard a modified Russian ballistic missile originally built to carry nuclear warheads. The mission launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome around 500 miles north of Moscow at 1757:51 GMT (1:57:51 p.m. EDT).

The United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket blasts into the predawn skies at Vandenberg Air Force Base with the NROL-45 payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.