Live coverage: Proton rocket launches with Turksat 4B

An upgraded model of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket fired into orbit early Sunday from Florida’s Space Coast, hoisting a record-setting 7.8-ton communications satellite for Telesat toward its planned perch more than 22,000 miles over the equator.

A pair of Earth-imaging satellites for the Italian military and a French-Israeli environmental monitoring project lifted off from French Guiana aboard a European Vega rocket at 0158:33 GMT Wednesday (9:58:33 p.m. EDT Tuesday).

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two cosmonauts and a NASA shuttle veteran blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday and set off after the International Space Station.