Live coverage: Ariane 5 blasts off with two Intelsat satellites

An Intelsat communications spacecraft running low on fuel has resumed commercial operations more than 22,000 miles over the Atlantic Ocean after getting an assist from a pioneering servicing satellite earlier this year.

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:47 p.m. PDT (4:47 p.m. EDT; 2047 GMT) Monday with a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.

NASA fired up four hydrogen-fueled main engines on the core stage of the first Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket Thursday in on a test stand in Mississippi, a redo of a crucial hot fire test that was cut short in January by technical issues. The engines burned more than eight minutes in an apparently successful test.