A SpaceX rocket carried 53 satellites for the Starlink internet constellation into orbit Friday after blasting off from California.

The Falcon 9 booster lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 3:07 p.m., and minutes later the first stage landed on a droneship in the Pacific Ocean while the second stage continued toward low Earth orbit.

SpaceX later tweeted that the satellites were successfully deployed.

Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin space tourism company announced Friday that its next rocket will take off on May 20 with six passengers on board.

One of the travelers will be the first woman born in Mexico to go into space.

Liftoff is scheduled for 8:30 am (1330 GMT) from western Texas. It will be the fifth manned space flight for the company.

Katya Echazarreta, who was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, arrived in the United States at age seven. Now 26, she will become the youngest American woman in space. The engineer was sponsored by the "Space for Humanity" program, which seeks to democratize access to space and selected her from among 7,000 candidates.

The crew will also include the second Brazilian person to go into space, Victor Correa Hespanha.

Blue Origin takes passengers above the Karman line, which marks the start of space at 100 kilometers (62 miles) high. The flight lasts about 10 minutes total.

Passengers can unfasten their seat belts and float for a few moments in zero gravity while they admire the curvature of Earth through the rocket windows.

The penultimate sunset at Concordia research station in Antarctica marks the beginning of a very exciting time for the 12-member crew: the coming of Antarctic night and the winter-over.

Medical doctor Hannes Hagson and his crew mates are finally embarking on their "real" mission in Antarctica: living and work in isolation for six months in the name of spaceflight research.

The Italian-French outpost Concordia is located 3,233 m above sea level where temperatures can drop to –80°C in the complete frozen darkness outside. The sun disappears behind the horizon for four months. No supplies or people can be flown in during the winter months; and the high altitude causes the crew to experience chronic hypobaric hypoxia or lack of oxygen in the brain.

These conditions are as close to living on another planet as humans can get on Earth.

For this reason, Hannes is facilitating biomedical experiments on himself and his crewmates to understand how humans cope with living in extreme isolation. From sleep studies to gut health measurements to mindful practices, the crew are poked and prodded to help researchers understand and overcome the challenges extreme environments, like space, pose to present and future explorers.