Live coverage: Two satellites lift off aboard Ariane 5

Russian launch crews on two continents are putting the final touches on a pair of Soyuz rockets scheduled to blast off less than two hours apart Friday — one carrying a three-man crew to the space station, and another boosting two European navigation satellites into orbit from the Amazon jungle.

After a 24-hour delay due to poor weather, an air-launched Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket fired into orbit at 9:59 p.m. EDT Thursday (0159 GMT Friday) after release from a carrier jet at an altitude of 39,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Cape Canaveral. The Pegasus rocket carried NASA’s ICON satellite into orbit to collect measurements of the ionosphere.

SpaceX has moved up its next launch to Wednesday, one day earlier than previously planned. A Falcon 9 rocket will take off with the next 60 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband Internet network at 3:37 p.m. EDT (1937 GMT) Wednesday from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There’s a 90 percent chance of favorable weather for launch Wednesday.