Live coverage: Proton rocket blasts off on lengthy 15-hour mission

Check out photos of a picturesque sunset at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad, where a Falcon 9 rocket is poised for liftoff with a commercial broadcasting satellite for Luxembourg-based SES.

Rocket Lab launched an Electron rocket from New Zealand at 9:20 p.m. EST Thursday (0220 GMT Friday) carrying 30 small payloads into low Earth orbit. The company said the first stage of the Electron rocket splashed down in the Pacific Ocean under a parachute, a major step in Rocket Lab’s rocket reuse program.

Russia’s Progress MS-06 supply ship launched Wednesday aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on the way to deliver food, fuel, spare parts, oxygen and water to the International Space Station’s crew.