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

Rocket Lab scrubbed a planned launch from New Zealand Wednesday with 10 small Earth observation satellites for customers in the United States and Japan. Officials have not confirmed a new target launch date for the Electron rocket.

In the run up to what may be the final flight of a Zenit launcher, a Russian-Ukrainian creation that ushered in a new era of Soviet-era rocketry, ground crews transferred the powerful booster to a launch pad Wednesday at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT) to begin a three-and-a-half hour mission to deliver two dozen satellites into three distinct orbits. The Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters returned to Cape Canaveral for successful landings, but the center core stage crashed during a landing attempt on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.