Live coverage: Ariane 5 blasts off with two Intelsat satellites

A European Vega launcher failed Wednesday night around two minutes after liftoff from French Guiana and fell into the Atlantic Ocean, destroying an Airbus-built surveillance satellite for the United Arab Emirates.

A Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off at 0541 GMT (1:41 a.m. EDT) Thursday from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East, carrying a new Russian weather satellite and 32 secondary payloads into polar orbit.

Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing subsidiary, built two small satellites awaiting launch Thursday night on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket on a mission to test the effectiveness of a drag-inducing device that could help remove spacecraft from orbit.