Live coverage: Ariane 5 rocket deploys satellites for Australia, India

A television broadcasting satellite for Eutelsat launched Friday atop a Russian Proton rocket to begin a 15-year mission beaming TV programming into homes across Europe. The Proton rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2220 GMT (5:20 p.m. EST) Friday.

SpaceX ground teams at Cape Canaveral transferred a Falcon 9 rocket to launch pad 40 and rotated the booster vertical Monday for a preflight hold-down firing, ahead of a liftoff scheduled for Wednesday night carrying 60 satellites into orbit for the company’s planned Starlink broadband constellation.

The SpaDeX mission will see two spacecraft orbit together before performing a docking demo needed on future missions. Liftoff happened at 10 p.m. IST (11:30 a.m. EST, 1630 UTC).