Live coverage: Soyuz rocket lifts off with new Galileo satellites

Flying for the 10th time from a tropical launch facility along the South American coastline, a Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off Dec. 18 and streaked through partly sunny skies with four satellites to extend the reach of the O3b Networks, a company founded to bring broadband to the world’s most remote and impoverished countries.

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.

SpaceX and United Launch Alliance have split up to $645 million in new contracts to deploy U.S. Air Force navigation and surveillance satellites into orbit from 2019 through 2021.