Live coverage: Proton fires into space with Eutelsat 9B

Watch a replay of one of Iridium’s 10 communications satellites launched Sunday deploys from a dispenser mounted on the forward end of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 upper stage.

A hefty European-built satellite destined to broadcast high-definition television to the Middle East and a U.S.-made relay station programmed to serve Latin America and North Atlantic air routes soared into space Thursday aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.

A three-person crew heading for the International Space Station took off Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and arrived in orbit around nine minutes later, beginning a two-day pursuit of the research outpost.