Live coverage: Ariane 5 blasts off with two Intelsat satellites

The heart of NASA’s first flight-ready Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket emerged from its factory in New Orleans Wednesday morning for a barge trip to the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for an eight-minute test-firing of its space shuttle-era hydrogen-fueled engines.

SpaceX test-fired a Falcon 9 rocket Friday at Cape Canaveral in preparation for liftoff as soon as Sunday with the company’s fifth batch of Starlink broadband satellites.

An Ariane 5 rocket launched Tuesday at 2101 GMT (4:01 p.m. EST) from French Guiana with a communications satellite to provide broadband and television services for the government of Saudi Arabia and commercial clients across Europe and the Middle East, and an Indian payload to help bridge the digital divide in South Asia.