Live coverage: Atlas 5 blasts off from California

Two direct-to-home broadcasting satellites have launched from French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. Liftoff with DirecTV 15 and Sky Mexico 1 occurred at 2116 GMT (5:16 p.m. EDT) Wednesday.

The launch of the next Landsat land imaging mission — a joint project between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey — has been delayed until around September 2021 after the effects of the coronavirus pandemic slowed work on the spacecraft in Arizona, NASA officials said.

Two American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut boarded their Soyuz MS-06 landing craft for a homecoming Tuesday night, U.S. time, concluding 168 days in orbit. The trio undocked from the International Space Station at 5:08 p.m. EST (2208 GMT), and landed on the snowy steppe of Kazakhstan at 9:31 p.m. EST (0231 GMT Wednesday).