Live coverage: Ariane 5 lifts off on its first Galileo launch

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 11:11 a.m. EDT (1511 GMT) today to boost Orbital ATK’s commercially-operated Cygnus cargo ship toward a Saturday rendezvous with the International Space Station. Follow the ascent in our live journal.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a Russian-launched, European-built spacecraft that arrived at Mars in October, is starting to dip into the upper reaches of the red planet’s atmosphere in a year-long “aerobraking” campaign place the observatory in the right position to hunt for methane, an indicator of potential biological activity.

The next flight of an Ariane 5 rocket, previously set for next week, has been delayed to no earlier than July 30 to review the readiness components it has in common with the Vega rocket after a launch failure earlier this month.