Live coverage: Proton soars into space with Inmarsat satellite

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two cosmonauts and a NASA shuttle veteran blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday and set off after the International Space Station.

Ground crews took steps this week to prepare for the next Falcon 9 launch, set for no earlier than Jan. 30 with a telecom satellite for SES and the Luxembourg government, as SpaceX officials stressed their rocket was not to blame for the rumored loss of a mysterious U.S. government payload after liftoff Sunday.

Rocket Lab launched a radar imaging satellite Tuesday for the Japanese company Synspective. The small Earth observation payload lifted off from New Zealand at 5:09 a.m. EST (1009 GMT) aboard an Electron rocket. Rocket Lab did not attempt to recover the Electron’s first stage on this mission.