Live coverage: Ariane 5 blasts off with two Intelsat satellites

The first 34 satellites manufactured on a new commercial spacecraft assembly line just outside the gates of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida are scheduled for liftoff on a Soyuz rocket Thursday halfway around the world in Kazakhstan, kicking off a sequence of up to 20 launches from three countries to deploy nearly 650 satellites for OneWeb’s global Internet network.

Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, has won a $3.4 billion NASA contract to build an Artemis lunar lander that will provide a downstream alternative to the Starship variant already being developed by SpaceX, the agency announced Friday.

The 13th and 14th operational members of Europe’s Galileo navigation satellite network are set for liftoff Tuesday aboard a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana. Track the progress of the flight with this timeline of key events.