Live coverage: Proton fires into space with Eutelsat 9B

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) today to place NASA’s new tracking station into the sky. The data router will relay video, telemetry and science information from the space station and dozens of research satellites to a central ground terminal. Follow the ascent in our live journal.

As a barebones Orion spacecraft awaits its first launch from Cape Canaveral, representatives of European governments agreed to fund the development of a power and propulsion element to take the crew capsule on voyages around the moon, to an asteroid, and eventually to Mars.

Ground crews returned to work Monday at the Guiana Space Center, a European-run spaceport on the northeastern shore of South America, after protests and a general strike across French Guiana interrupted launch operations for five weeks.