Live coverage: Ariane 5 successful in middle-of-the-night launch

The third Ariane 5 flight of the year is on track for a late afternoon liftoff Thursday from French Guiana with two U.S.-built communications satellites to broadcast television channels to millions of DISH Network subscribers and improve banking services across the islands of Indonesia.

A Soyuz rocket is scheduled for liftoff Friday from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s newest launch site, with 33 satellites from 12 countries on-board to collect weather data and test new space technology.

Rocket Lab announced this week it has added two more nanosatellites to the first operational launch of the company’s Electron rocket, which is now scheduled to take off from New Zealand no earlier than Nov. 10, U.S. time, after a multi-month delay to resolve a technical problem.