Live coverage: Ariane 5 blasts off with two Intelsat satellites

Firing into space from the historic Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a Russian Proton rocket guided a European television broadcast satellite into orbit Saturday. Check out photos of the Proton rocket’s nighttime liftoff with the Astra 2G satellite.

After months of delays caused by launch vehicle issues and the coronavirus pandemic, a Russian Soyuz rocket and Fregat upper stage took off from South America and delivered the French-built Falcon Eye 2 military observation satellite to an on-target orbit Tuesday night for the United Arab Emirates.

Cocooned inside the nose cone of its Falcon 9 rocket booster, the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane journeyed from a former space shuttle hangar at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, past the Vehicle Assembly Building and toward launch pad 39A last week ahead of liftoff Thursday.