Q&A with Matt Desch, CEO of Iridium (members only)

Ground crews towed a towering Ariane 5 rocket to its launch pad in French Guiana on Wednesday for final flight preparations before Thursday’s launch with spacecraft for two of the world’s top commercial satellite operators.

SpaceX called off a planned launch attempt Saturday to deploy the next batch of satellites for the Starlink broadband network. Two commercial Earth-observing satellites for BlackSky are also awaiting a ride into orbit on the Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Two U.S.-built commercial communications satellites moved to their last stop on Earth on Tuesday, when an Ariane 5 rocket rolled out to a launch pad at the edge of the Amazon jungle on the eve of liftoff.