Live coverage: Proton fires into space with Eutelsat 9B

A European environmental satellite rode a solid-fueled Vega launcher from a tropical spaceport at the edge of the Amazon jungle into polar orbit Monday night, adding a new eye in the sky to check on the health of crops and forests from space.

The first launch for Iridium’s next-generation mobile communications fleet has been pushed back four months — from December until April — to resolve a technical problem inside the spacecraft’s Ka-band communications payload.

A Russian communications satellite lifted off from a snow-covered launch pad in Kazakhstan on Monday, marking the 400th flight of a Proton rocket and the launcher’s first commercial mission in 10 months.