Live coverage: Minotaur 4 rocket makes first launch from Cape Canaveral

A nanosatellite built in Scotland for Kepler Communications, a Toronto company planning a 140-satellite global data relay network, rode to orbit Friday with five Chinese satellites launched aboard a solid-fueled Long March 11 booster from the Gobi Desert.

Blue Origin scrubbed the planned launch Tuesday of the company’s suborbital New Shepard booster from West Texas due to a “ground infrastructure issue,” and later said the flight would be pushed back to early 2019.

The launch of a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana with four more satellites Thursday to join SES’s O3b broadband network will help satisfy growing bandwidth demands in Latin America, Africa and the Pacific islands until the deployment of a new generation of upgraded spacecraft in 2021, SES officials said.