Live views of launch pad 39A (members only)

A new communications satellite to beam television channels to millions of DISH Network subscribers in the United States and the first spacecraft dedicated to support banking services have been attached to an Ariane 5 rocket for liftoff June 8 from French Guiana.

If SpaceX is able to dispatch a robotic Dragon capsule to land on the red planet in 2018 on time and successfully, engineers stand to get a lesson on what it will take to eventually send humans there, capturing key data on an untested Mars landing scheme a decade sooner than NASA could do it, space agency officials said this week.

A rocket-transporting railroad car ferried a Proton rocket to its launch pad Friday at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for final checkouts and testing before the vehicle’s scheduled June 21 liftoff with the Russian-German Spektr-RG X-ray telescope.