Live coverage of the countdown and launch of an Ariane 5 rocket with the DirecTV and Sky Mexico 1 communications satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
Falcon 9
Live coverage: SpaceX launches Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral
SpaceX’s first launch since August took off from Cape Canaveral at 9:56 a.m. EST (1456 GMT) to carry 60 broadband satellites into orbit for the company’s Starlink network. The Starlink satellites rode together on top of a Falcon 9 rocket with a previously-flown first stage and a reused payload fairing.
Mission Reports
Live coverage: Soyuz crew lands in Kazakhstan
Russian commander Sergey Prokopyev, German flight engineer Alexander Gerst, and NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor closed out a nearly 197-day space mission with a landing in Kazakhstan aboard their Soyuz MS-09 crew carry ship at 0502 GMT (12:02 a.m. EST) Thursday. The Soyuz crew undocked from the International Space Station at 0140 GMT (8:40 p.m. EST Wednesday) to begin their return to Earth.