Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

Arianespace plans 11 launches from French Guiana this year, including eight flights by the heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket with up to a dozen large telecommunications satellites and four spacecraft for Europe’s Galileo navigation system.

A new communications satellite to beam television channels to millions of DISH Network subscribers in the United States and the first spacecraft dedicated to support banking services have been attached to an Ariane 5 rocket for liftoff June 8 from French Guiana.

A powerful European Ariane 5 rocket blasted off from French Guiana late Friday and boosted a pair of satellites into space for a seven-year plunge into the inner solar system, a voyage requiring seven planetary flybys to slow down enough in the sun’s gravitational clutches to slip into orbit around hellish Mercury.