Live coverage: Proton lifts off with U.S.-built satellite for Asian company

For the second time in seven weeks, SpaceX, Telesat and SSL teamed up for a commercial satellite launch from Cape Canaveral early Monday, this time successfully deploying into orbit a high-power telecom payload developed in a joint venture with a Hong Kong-based company.

SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon spacecraft, fixed to the forward end of a Falcon 9 rocket, emerged Thursday from the company’s hangar at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the quarter-mile journey to its launch mount at pad 39A, where liftoff is scheduled early Saturday on a critical test flight before astronauts strap into the ship later this year.

SpaceX and Arianespace recently announced plans to launch rideshare missions to sun-synchronous and geostationary orbit, dedicating big rocket capacity for small satellites as the U.S.-based launch broker Spaceflight committed to using a new Indian microsatellite launcher set to debut later this year.