Live coverage: New Horizons flyby target comes into focus

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:47 p.m. PDT (4:47 p.m. EDT; 2047 GMT) Monday with a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.

An Ariane 5 rocket launched Tuesday with the Arabsat 6B and GSAT 15 communications satellites to broadcast television across the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia and link India with telecom and navigation services. Liftoff from Kourou, French Guiana, occurred at 2134 GMT (4:34 p.m. EST).

Carol Raymond helps lead the Dawn science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where she oversees research investigating comets and asteroids, including the two objects visited during Dawn’s decade-long mission: Vesta and Ceres.