Live coverage: Ariane 5 launches for DirecTV

SpaceX’s upgraded Falcon 9 rocket debuted May 11 with a successful launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying the Bangabandhu 1 communications satellite.

Ground crews at the Guiana Space Center in South America have spent the last few months preparing the BepiColombo spacecraft, a tandem mission with European and Japanese science orbiters bound for Mercury, for launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.

Russian rocket technicians planned to swap out a failed inertial measurement unit inside a Soyuz rocket overnight Sunday after a failure in the navigation system forced officials to abort the booster’s planned launch of five satellites from French Guiana.