Live coverage: Ariane 5 blasts off with two Intelsat satellites

SpaceX’s two fast-maneuvering payload fairing recovery vessels were in the right place at the right time Monday to catch both halves of the nose shroud jettisoned by a Falcon 9 rocket climbing into orbit with South Korea’s Anasis 2 military communications satellite.

Rising atop a column of rocket exhaust lighting up the Kazakh steppe, a Russian Proton booster took off Thursday with a commercial communications satellite for AsiaSat.

SpaceX launch crews rolled out the company’s next Falcon 9 rocket to pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, then lifted the two-stage launcher vertical for a hold-down engine firing Thursday in preparation for launch next week with a South Korean-owned commercial communications satellite.