Live coverage: Soyuz launches on 13th flight from French Guiana

A Soyuz rocket streaked into sunny skies over a new multibillion-dollar Siberian spaceport Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin watching from a nearby viewing stand, opening another gateway to space for satellites, and eventually cosmonaut crews.

Crowned with a European-built communications satellite designed to broadcast television over the Americas, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a previously-flown first stage booster lifted off Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A Wednesday at 6:53 p.m. EDT (2253 GMT).

SpaceX conducted its first launch from Florida in more than two months Thursday, when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center with the Qatari Es’hail 2 communications satellite at 3:46 p.m. EST (2046 GMT). The Falcon 9’s reused first stage landed on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.