Live coverage: Orion lands in Pacific

A NASA spacecraft that will fly closer to the sun than any mission before will launch on a Delta 4-Heavy rocket in 2018, requiring a boost from the largest active launcher in the U.S. inventory and repeated flybys around Venus to reach an operating post inside the solar atmosphere.

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.

Soaring more than 200 miles above Earth, a Chinese spacecraft with two astronauts on-board closed in for docking with the Tiangong 2 space lab just before 1930 GMT (3:30 p.m. EDT).