Video: Falcon 9 launch with natural sound (members only)

Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rocket will take about 11 minutes to place NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, satellite into a roughly 357-mile-high (575-kilometer) orbit after an airborne launch off Florida’s east coast.

The third launch of China’s heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket successfully delivered its satellite payload to orbit Friday, validating engine design changes after a failure on the Long March 5’s second flight, and clearing the way for the launch of a Chinese Mars rover and lunar sample return mission in 2020.

A pair of television broadcast satellites for AT&T and Eutelsat rocketed into orbit Thursday evening, riding a European Ariane 5 launcher into space in a spectacular sunset launch from the Guiana Space Center on the northeastern coast South America.