Q&A with Dan Hart, president and CEO of Virgin Orbit (members only)

A powerful commercial communications satellite to broadcast Internet signals over the Asia-Pacific region has arrived at Cape Canaveral for final launch preparations ahead of a planned Dec. 15 liftoff on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Unimpeded by rain showers and a dark gray blanket of low clouds, an Ariane 5 rocket thundered away from a European-run space base in the jungle of French Guiana Tuesday to place four Galileo navigation satellites in orbit, an on-target deployment that should improve the location accuracy of new smartphones around the world.

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.