Live coverage: Proton rocket launches with Turksat 4B

Lighting up the pre-dawn sky, a Soyuz rocket roared to life and streaked into orbit Tuesday carrying a Russian cosmonaut and two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, boosting the lab’s crew back to six and the U.S. complement to four NASA-sponsored astronauts.

A powerful commercial communications satellite driven by plasma thrusters rode a reused SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster away from Cape Canaveral early Monday, climbing into orbit to connect companies, homes, airplanes and ships across much of the Eastern Hemisphere.

An experimental microsatellite built and owned by Astro Digital, a California-based company, rode Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket into orbit at 9:22 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0122 GMT Thursday) from New Zealand.