Live coverage: Two telecom satellites launched by Falcon 9, booster recovery fails

A Soyuz rocket launched Friday with four commercial satellites to expand broadband Internet coverage in remote parts of the world, climbing into orbit from the Guiana Space Center positioned on the northeastern shore of South America.

A Chinese Long March 3B rocket lifted off Tuesday from the country’s Xichang space base, heading into orbit with a secretive payload believed by Western observers to be a military communications satellite.

The launch of five commercial Iridium message relay satellites and a pair of U.S.-German orbiting geophysics probes on a Falcon 9 rocket from California has been delayed three days to May 22, and a week-long schedule slip to May 31 is expected for the next SpaceX flight from Cape Canaveral with an SES communications payload.