Live coverage: Ariane 5 blasts off with two Intelsat satellites

Already encapsulated in the 18-foot-diameter nose cone, the Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane is hoisted atop the Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral’s Vertical Integration Facility.

A commercial satellite launched Sunday on a Russian Proton rocket successfully deployed in orbit thousands of miles above Earth to join Inmarsat’s new communications network providing high-speed data links between airplanes, ships and far-flung customers anywhere in the world.

Boeing and SpaceX hope to launch commercial crew ferry ships on long-awaited test flights later this year, but both companies face major challenges getting the spacecraft certified before late 2019 when seats aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft will no longer be easily available for NASA space station crews, officials told lawmakers Wednesday.