Live coverage: Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from California, lands in Pacific

A Russian Proton rocket lifted off Thursday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the AsiaSat 9 satellite destined to provide television broadcast, video networking and data delivery services over the Asia-Pacific region. Launch occurred at 1852:16 GMT (2:52:16 p.m. EDT), beginning a series of maneuvers expected to last nine hours before AsiaSat 9 is deployed from the rocket.

Poised to loft a Russian-German X-ray astronomy observatory into space Friday, a Proton rocket returned to its launch pad Tuesday at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan after a three-week delay to replace a drained battery on the vehicle.

Sixty more SpaceX Starlink broadband satellites rocketed into orbit Tuesday from the Kennedy Space Center, breaking a streak canceled launch attempts at the Florida spaceport in recent weeks and nudging the Starlink network closer to reaching a wider population.