Live coverage: Three-man crew closes out 173-day space mission

A Soyuz rocket lifted off from French Guiana on Thursday, launching four satellites owned by O3b Networks nearly 5,000 miles above Earth to expand access to high-speed Internet in the developing world.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket fitted with five powerful solid-fueled boosters has lifted off from a seaside launch complex at Cape Canaveral with the U.S. Navy’s third Mobile User Objective System communications satellite.

Days before breaking ground on a new spacecraft assembly line near Cape Canaveral, OneWeb and Intelsat announced a proposed merger Tuesday that would couple a planned fleet of 900 broadband Internet satellites with a high-power communications network in geostationary orbit.