Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

Europe’s Sentinel 3A satellite, designed for real-time surveys of the world’s oceans, ice sheets, lakes and rivers, is attached to a decommissioned Russian nuclear missile for launch Tuesday. These photos show the spacecraft’s final prelaunch preparations.

By the light of a waning moon, a Russian rocket carrying a veteran cosmonaut, a French flight engineer making his first flight and America’s most experienced female astronaut blasted off and streaked smoothly into orbit Thursday, the first step in a two-day rendezvous with the International Space Station.

Arianespace chief executive Stephane Israel announced an anomaly occurred during Thursday’s flight of an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, shortly after the launcher’s second stage engine ignited.