Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

An Ariane 5 rocket launched Tuesday at 2101 GMT (4:01 p.m. EST) from French Guiana with a communications satellite to provide broadband and television services for the government of Saudi Arabia and commercial clients across Europe and the Middle East, and an Indian payload to help bridge the digital divide in South Asia.

NASA has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket to launch a robotic mission in July 2022 to explore Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The Psyche probe is NASA’s first mission assigned to fly on SpaceX’s heavy-lift launcher.

The Starlink 17-28 mission is the 58th mission launching the broadband satellites into low Earth orbit. Liftoff from pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base occurred at 9:39:06 a.m. PDT (12:39:06 p.m. EDT / 1639:06 UTC).