Live coverage: 400th Proton rocket takes off with Russian satellite

Armed with capital and an anchor customer for a trailblazing satellite life extension service, Orbital ATK has signed a contract to loft its first robotic servicing tug aboard a Russian Proton rocket in 2018 on a shared launch with a Eutelsat communications satellite.

A Soyuz-2.1b booster loaded with 34 satellites for OneWeb’s global Internet network rolled out of its assembly building Monday at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and rode a rail car to its launch pad for final preflight checks before liftoff Thursday.

The launch of an EchoStar communications satellite to cover Europe has been delayed to October to allow Russian engineers to complete an inquiry into a glitch suffered during a Proton rocket flight in June, industry officials said.