Live coverage: Soyuz crew capsule departs station, lands in Kazakhstan

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.

The threat from Hurricane Nicole churning toward a tracking station in Bermuda will keep Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket from launching on a space station cargo run until at least Sunday, officials said Tuesday.

An Antares launcher rocketed into orbit Saturday from the Eastern Shore of Virginia, deploying a Northrop Grumman Cygnus supply ship carrying nearly 8,400 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station, the the most massive collection of payloads ever flown to the research outpost on a U.S. commercial freighter.