Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

A powerful Ariane 5 rocket rolled out of its vertical assembly hangar to a tropical launch pad on the shores of South America on Monday, and these photos show the booster on the eve of liftoff.

A Soyuz rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1:55 a.m. EST (0655 GMT) Sunday with the Arktika-M 1 spacecraft, the first in a new line of Russian satellites designed to provide weather observations over the Arctic.

The liftoff of a European satellite to measure global wind fields has been delayed 24 hours to Wednesday in hopes of a better weather forecast at the Vega rocket’s launch base in French Guiana, officials announced Monday.