Live coverage: Delta 2 launches

A Delta 2 rocket boosted by nine strap-on motors and two liquid-fueled stages will launch NOAA’s JPSS 1 weather satellite into a 511-mile-high (822-kilometer) orbit following liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

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).

A Russian Proton rocket launched at 0345 GMT Thursday (11:45 p.m. EDT Wednesday) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the EchoStar 21 communications satellite, a hefty 7.6-ton telecommunications station designed to support a mobile network in Europe. Managed by U.S.-based International Launch Services, the mission will take more than nine hours to deliver EchoStar 21 into a geostationary transfer orbit using five burns of the Breeze M upper stage engine.