Live coverage: Vega rocket blasts off from French Guiana on commercial flight

An Ariane 5 rocket emerged from the final assembly building at the Guiana Space Center in South America on Monday for the journey across the tropical spaceport to the ELA-3 launch zone, where the 179-foot-tall (54.8-meter) booster will lift off Tuesday with a pair of commercial communications satellites.

SpaceX has released video from an Aug. 30 launch captured by a camera mounted aboard the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, showing the booster’s climb into space from Cape Canaveral and a fiery return to the Florida spaceport, where SpaceX will ready the vehicle for another mission.

Follow the major events during the launch of Europe’s LISA Pathfinder gravitational probe testbed, from liftoff of its Vega rocket booster from French Guiana through deployment into its initial orbit.