Live coverage: Proton blasts off on return-to-flight mission

A powerhouse communications satellite with up to five times the capacity of most existing telecom craft reached orbit Wednesday after a nighttime blastoff from French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket, marking an auspicious start to the deployment of Intelsat’s $2 billion next-generation satellite network.

NASA has placed an order with Boeing for the first operational mission to ferry a crew to the International Space Station in a new era of commercial human spaceflight.

Tyvak, a manufacturer of small satellites, disclosed new details Monday about an experimental spacecraft launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Saturday, revealing plans to validate compact optical telescopes that could offer a new way to monitor space traffic and orbital debris.