4K video: Wide-angle view of Falcon 9 hotfire

A bad input to the Ariane 5 rocket’s guidance system that was missed during pre-launch quality control checks caused the launcher to deviate from its expected flight path and place two commercial communications satellites in the wrong orbit Jan. 25, Arianespace announced Friday.

A SpaceX Dragon capsule packed with more than 5,000 pounds of hardware, provisions and experiments launched July 25 from Cape Canaveral and arrived at the International Space Station two days later.

Russian ground crews working in starkly different environments on the barren steppes of Kazakhstan and in the lush jungles of South America are readying a pair of Soyuz rockets for two launches Thursday, one to resupply the International Space Station, and another to broaden the capacity of SES’s O3b Internet network.