Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

A Russian Proton rocket rolled out to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, riding a specially-built rail car with Europe’s ExoMars mission bound for the red planet.

A Vega rocket fired into space at 8:52 p.m. EST Monday (0152 GMT Tuesday) from the Guiana Space Center in South America, but the mission deviated from its planned trajectory. The rocket was boosting a Spanish Earth observation satellite and a French research payload into orbit.

A Soyuz rocket with a three-person crew heading for the International Space Station lifted off at 1357 GMT (9:57 a.m. EDT) Wednesday in the final launch currently scheduled from Gagarin’s Start, a historic site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan from where Yuri Gagarin departed on the first human spaceflight in 1961. Beginning next year, Soyuz crews will blast off from a different pad at Baikonur.