Live coverage: Soyuz sends Russian and two Americans to space station

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral at 6:28 a.m. EDT (1028 GMT) today to deploy the Mexican Morelos 3 mobile communications satellite.

A Russian Soyuz booster lifted off Friday from Kazakhstan on a complex mission to deploy 73 satellites into three different orbits, including a Russian spacecraft to locate forest fires, 48 CubeSats for Planet’s global Earth observation fleet, and eight nanosatellites for Spire Global’s commercial weather network.

Two more roll-out solar arrays will ride a SpaceX cargo ship to the International Space Station this weekend, continuing a years-long mid-life station upgrade as NASA plans procurement of a final set of new solar wings to fully reinforce the lab’s power supply.