Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

Russia’s Proton rocket took off on its first launch of the year Sunday with a commercial satellite to expand Inmarsat’s next-generation mobile communications network. Liftoff occurred at 1231 GMT (7:31 a.m. EST), and it took more than 15 hours to place the Inmarsat spacecraft in the correct orbit.

A SpaceX-owned Dragon cargo craft departed the International Space Station at 1011 GMT (6:11 a.m. EDT) Friday, and made a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at 1547 GMT (11:47 a.m. EDT) with more than 3,000 pounds of cargo, research specimens and other hardware.

Join us for a roundup of the week’s space news with reporters covering the big stories. Spaceflight Now’s Will Robinson-Smith is joined by Irene Klotz, Senior Space Editor for Aviation Week, and Richard Tribou, Space Reporter and Senior Content Editor for The Orlando Sentinel.