Q&A with Opher Doron, general manager of IAI’s space division (members only)

A Russian military communications satellite rode a Soyuz rocket and Fregat upper stage Thursday into an orbit stretching nearly 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) above Earth, successfully launching after a one-month delay to replace a suspect third stage on the Soyuz booster.

As viewed from the ITL Causeway at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket departs for space with the EchoStar 19 satellite to delivery Internet connectivity across the U.S.

The first launch for Iridium’s next-generation mobile communications fleet has been pushed back four months — from December until April — to resolve a technical problem inside the spacecraft’s Ka-band communications payload.