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

Russia’s new Angara 5 rocket, the biggest Russian launcher since the end of the Cold War, made a pre-dawn blastoff from the wintry Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Tuesday on a successful first flight. See video and photos of the fiery liftoff from the snowy launch pad.

A Russian Soyuz rocket launched from French Guiana on Thursday at 1154:53 GMT (7:54:53 a.m. EDT) with the SES 15 communications satellite, a U.S.-built craft designed to support in-flight connectivity, video broadcasts and airborne navigation over North America.

A commercial mission developed by the Japanese company Astroscale rocketed into space on a Russian Soyuz launcher Monday with 37 other payloads, ready to kick off an orbital “dance” with two small spacecraft demonstrating how satellite sweepers might one day drag junk out of orbit.