Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

Rocket Lab’s second launch in a little more than a week blasted off from New Zealand at 5:14 a.m. EDT (0914 UTC) Friday with two commercial Earth observation satellites for BlackSky. The Electron rocket’s first stage booster successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean for recovery.

A new space weather observatory to be stationed a million miles from Earth has been enclosed inside the nose cone of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff Sunday from Cape Canaveral.

Russian mission control said Thursday an unpiloted Progress space station supply ship carrying nearly 5,400 pounds of rocket fuel, food, water and a new spacesuit burned up in Earth’s atmosphere shortly after it blasted off from Kazakhstan, and evidence points to a problem with the third stage of the cargo carrier’s Soyuz booster.