Live coverage: Proton fires into space with Eutelsat 9B

A commercial supply ship owned and operated by Orbital ATK departed the International Space Station on Friday, heading for a destructive re-entry over the Pacific Ocean with more than 1.5 tons of trash. The station’s robotic arm released Cygnus at 1226 GMT (7:26 a.m. EST).

SpaceX launch crews rolled out the company’s next Falcon 9 rocket to pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, then lifted the two-stage launcher vertical for a hold-down engine firing Thursday in preparation for launch next week with a South Korean-owned commercial communications satellite.

Europe’s first mission to Mercury, a quartet of Galileo navigation spacecraft, the world’s first global winds observatory, and a new European weather satellite have arrived at an equatorial launch base in French Guiana in preparation for launches in the coming months.