Photos: Pad cameras capture Atlas 5 launch

Two communications satellites blasted off Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, kicking off more than a half-year of novel maneuvers in orbit using plasma drive engines to position the spacecraft 22,300 miles above Earth and link the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a Glonass navigation satellite withstood a lightning strike seconds after liftoff Monday, and still delivered its payload to orbit.

After an up-and-down week of intermittent contact with the LightSail satellite, the tiny spacecraft radioed home Saturday, giving engineers hope to deploy the experiment’s solar sail as soon as Sunday.