Live coverage: Japan’s enhanced Epsilon booster blasts off

SpaceX launched another batch of 60 Starlink internet satellites Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The broadband stations lifted off at 8:02 a.m. EST (1302 GMT) aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.

A Vega rocket faltered minutes after liftoff from French Guiana at 9:53 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0153 GMT) and failed to reach orbit with a European-built reconnaissance satellite for the United Arab Emirates. The payload and launcher fell into the Atlantic Ocean, marking the first failure for the solid-fueled Vega launch vehicle.

A U.S.-Russian-Italian space crew closed out a 199-day expedition on the International Space Station with a parachute-assisted landing Thursday on the steppe of Kazakhstan. Touchdown of the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft occurred at 1343 GMT (9:43 a.m. EDT).