Live coverage: SpaceX launches another batch of Starlink satellites

A solid-fueled Vega rocket blasted off from French Guiana on Thursday with five Earth observation satellites for Peru and the Google subsidiary Terra Bella. The four-stage booster fired away from its tropical launch pad right on time at 9:43 p.m. EDT (0143 GMT Friday).

A little more than a year after the Falcon Heavy rocket’s first test flight, SpaceX teams on Florida’s Space Coast are readying the world’s most powerful operational launcher for its second mission Thursday with a commercial communications satellite.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, powered by a previously-flown booster, lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:27 p.m. EDT (2227 GMT) Thursday. The mission, which lofted the SES 10 communications satellite, marks the first time SpaceX has reused the first stage of one of its Falcon 9 launchers.