Live coverage of the countdown and launch of an Ariane 5 rocket with the Thor 7 and Sicral 2 communications satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
Atlas 5
Live coverage: Atlas 5 rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral
United Launch Alliance teams at Cape Canaveral launched an Atlas 5 rocket at 6:13 a.m. EDT (1013 GMT) Thursday with the U.S. Air Force’s fifth Advanced Extremely High Frequency communications satellite. The AEHF 5 satellite will join a network of geostationary relay stations providing secure, jam-resistant video, voice and data links for the U.S. military.
Mission Reports
Live coverage: New Horizons flyby target comes into focus
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made a historic New Year’s encounter with an object nicknamed Ultima Thule in the Kuiper Belt a billion miles beyond Pluto. The NASA space probe passed Ultima Thule at a distance of around 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) on Jan. 1, making it the most distant planetary body ever explored up close.