Live coverage: Falcon 9 roars into orbit with Japanese satellite

A Ukrainian-built Zenit booster and a Russian-made Fregat upper stage launched with an Angolan communications satellite Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, but engineers lost contact with the spacecraft soon after its deployment in orbit more than 22,000 miles above Earth.

SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket at 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) Thursday, two days after high winds prevented liftoff. The nearly 23-story booster carried the EchoStar 23 communications satellite into orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to provide broadcast television programming across Brazil.

The launch added another 13 satellites featuring Direct to Cell capabilities to SpaceX’s growing constellation. Liftoff happened at 5:07 a.m. PDT (8:07 a.m. EDT, 1207 UTC)