Live coverage: Ariane 5 blasts off with two Intelsat satellites

A threatening layer of clouds stayed away from SpaceX’s launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Tuesday, allowing for clear viewing of a spectacular Falcon 9 launch carrying commercial and scientific satellites into polar orbit.

Check out imagery from Arianespace and the French space agency showing the launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket Dec. 29 from the Guiana Space Center in South America.

A pair of European-built, NASA-backed research satellites set for launch Tuesday from California will extend 15 years of global gravity field measurements collected by the GRACE mission before it ended last year, supplying scientists with data to help track the melting of Earth’s ice sheets and chart the impacts of floods and droughts.