Video: Delta 4 lifts off

A commercial satellite launched Sunday on a Russian Proton rocket successfully deployed in orbit thousands of miles above Earth to join Inmarsat’s new communications network providing high-speed data links between airplanes, ships and far-flung customers anywhere in the world.

A Russian Soyuz rocket topped with two European Galileo navigation satellites soared into orbit before dawn Tuesday, vaulting through low clouds hanging over its jungle launch base in French Guiana.

These photos show a 194-foot-tall United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket standing on pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in advance of a planned launch with the U.S. Space Force’s fifth SBIRS missile warning satellite.