Video: Post-launch news conference

A commercial communications satellite will blast off Thursday from French Guiana on top of a Soyuz rocket, on the way to a station over the Americas to supply bandwidth to airline travelers and broadcasters in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Rocket Lab’s light-class Electron launcher is set to take off on its seventh flight from New Zealand, aiming for a 280-mile-high (450-kilometer) orbit with seven small satellites for commercial customers, the U.S. military and university students.

After poor weather scrubbed a launch attempt Tuesday, Blue Origin plans to launch the 12th flight of the company’s New Shepard suborbital booster Wednesday from West Texas with a package of research payloads.