Live coverage: Ariane 5 blasts off with two Intelsat satellites

Flying its most complex mission to date, a Japanese H-2A rocket fired off a launch pad and roared into space from southern Japan on Tuesday, heading for an on-target deployment of the Telstar 12 Vantage communications satellite four-and-a-half hours later.

The second orbital test flight of India’s GSLV Mk.3 launcher took off Wednesday, hoisting a high-throughput communications satellite into orbit to connect the county’s remote population and clearing the way for a robotic lunar lander to use the rocket in January.

Confident in technical and procedural fixes implemented since a launch in August left two Galileo satellites in the wrong orbit, officials with Europe’s navigation program say Friday’s liftoff of two identical craft on a Soyuz rocket will try to fill the same slots in the fleet as targeted by last year’s failed mission.