Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

More than three weeks after a faulty electrical component halted a countdown moments before liftoff, an Ariane 5 rocket lifted off from French Guiana on Friday with two commercial communications satellites. Launch occurred at 2156 GMT (5:56 p.m. EDT).

Two U.S.-built commercial communications satellites moved to their last stop on Earth on Tuesday, when an Ariane 5 rocket rolled out to a launch pad at the edge of the Amazon jungle on the eve of liftoff.

Armed with $460 million in fresh financing to grow its broadband communications capacity, O3b Networks has selected Thales Alenia Space to build eight new satellites and Arianespace to launch at least four of them aboard a Soyuz rocket in 2018.