Live coverage: Atlas 5 blasts off from California

A Russian Proton rocket launched at 0345 GMT Thursday (11:45 p.m. EDT Wednesday) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the EchoStar 21 communications satellite, a hefty 7.6-ton telecommunications station designed to support a mobile network in Europe. Managed by U.S.-based International Launch Services, the mission will take more than nine hours to deliver EchoStar 21 into a geostationary transfer orbit using five burns of the Breeze M upper stage engine.

India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle carried a new communications satellite into orbit Thursday, replacing a satellite launched in 2011 providing telemedicine, remote education, and other telecom services across the Indian subcontinent. Liftoff occurred at 5:11 a.m. EST (1011 GMT).

This is the ascent timeline to be followed by the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in launching the Mobile User Objective System satellite No. 4 on Wednesday at 5:59 a.m. EDT.