Live coverage: Veteran three-man crew docks with space station

The Ariane 5 rocket’s fifth flight of the year launched at 2030 GMT (4:30 p.m. EDT) with the Sky Muster and Arsat 2 communications satellites, designed to deliver broadband Internet to far-flung Australian citizens and broadcast television and networking services to Argentina and nearby countries.

Speaking publicly for the first time since a Falcon 9 rocket failure that destroyed a Dragon cargo capsule for the International Space Station, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Tuesday that engineers are still piecing together what happened during the June 28 accident in hopes of announcing more details within a few days.

A Vega launcher lifted off Tuesday night from a spaceport at the edge of South America’s Amazon rainforest, climbed into orbit on the power of four Italian- and Ukrainian-built rocket stages, and successfully deployed a French-built, Moroccan-owned military surveillance satellite nearly 400 miles above Earth.