Live coverage: Soyuz crew capsule arrives at space station

A Brazilian television broadcasting satellite and Europe’s next weather observatory packaged atop an Ariane 5 rocket lifted off at 2142 GMT (5:42 p.m. EDT) Wednesday from Kourou, French Guiana.

Officials hailed an action-packed three-minute test flight Tuesday over Cape Canaveral that exercised the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort rocket, a key safety system on the capsule NASA is developing to carry astronauts back to the moon.

A four-man crew led by a former NASA astronaut intends to blast off early next year aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for a flight to the International Space Station, the first such purely commercial, non-government flight to orbit in space history, officials said Tuesday.