Live coverage: Yurchikhin, Fischer reach space station after fast-track rendezvous

A Russian Soyuz launcher fired into orbit from the remote steppe of Kazakhstan Thursday with 34 satellites built on Florida’s Space Coast, commencing a sequence of launches to deploy a network of nearly 650 spacecraft for a global broadband network owned by OneWeb.

China plans to launch a new human-rated space laboratory as soon as July and send two astronauts to visit the mini-space station by end of the year.

A Japanese H-2A rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 0017:46 GMT Thursday (8:17:46 p.m. EDT Wednesday) with the Michibiki 2 navigation satellite designed to improve positioning and timing services over Japan.