US aerospace company SpaceX has sent a further 57 satellites into space for an earth-spanning internet network, launched on Friday in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

SpaceX postponed a launch of 60 satellites into low-Earth orbit that was scheduled for Thursday night, possibly until next week, citing a need for software updates.

India fired a rocket carrying 31 small satellites into space on Friday, several of them for European countries looking for high resolution earth images, underlining its strength as a low-cost provider of services in space.

Rocket Lab, a Silicon Valley-funded space launch company, on Thursday launched the maiden flight of its battery-powered, 3-D printed rocket from New Zealand's remote Mahia Peninsula.

India successfully put a record 104 satellites from a single rocket into orbit on Wednesday in the latest triumph for its famously frugal space agency.

Four Galileo satellites were sent into orbit on the Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana on Thursday and will soon be detectable by European smartphones.

India's space agency on Monday inserted eight satellites into two different orbits in one of its most complex and longest missions.

India successfully launched 20 satellites in a single mission on Wednesday, with most of them set to serve international customers as the South Asian country pursues a bigger share of the $300bn global space industry.