Live coverage: Proton soars into space with Inmarsat satellite

Europe’s Sentinel 3B environmental satellite was shipped to the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia’s far northern Arkhangelsk region in March for a month-long campaign to prepare the spacecraft for liftoff aboard a Rockot launcher.

An Ariane 5 rocket journeyed from its assembly hangar to a nearby launch pad in French Guiana on Tuesday, a day before the heavy-duty launcher is scheduled for liftoff with the first in a new generation of high-capacity communications satellites for Intelsat.

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket lifted off Wednesday at 2:36 p.m. EDT (1836 GMT) from Cape Canaveral on a mission to place into orbit a fresh satellite for the Global Positioning System.