Live coverage: Indian PSLV launches with RISAT 2B radar satellite

The ninth and final flight of Japan’s H-2B rocket — the country’s most powerful launcher — drove an automated cargo freighter into orbit Wednesday on a five-day pursuit of the International Space Station.

NASA managers Thursday cleared the $1.5 billion Parker Solar Probe for launch early Saturday on a daring mission to “touch the sun,” repeatedly flying through its outer atmosphere to find out why the blazing corona is millions of degrees hotter than our star’s visible surface.

An Ariane 5 rocket and four Galileo navigation satellites launched from French Guiana at 1125 GMT (7:25 a.m. EDT), beginning a four-hour climb into orbit more than 14,000 miles above Earth.