Live coverage: International Space Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 10:29 a.m. EDT (1429 GMT) Wednesday with two Boeing-built communications payloads for Eutelsat and Asia Broadcast Satellite. A secondary objective to recover the first stage offshore in the Atlantic Ocean failed.

This video captures the final portion of the launch countdown and follows the Atlas 5 rocket’s flight through arrival in the preliminary orbit carrying the Curiosity rover headed for Mars. (Membership Required)

NASA’s newest observatory in space has started its search for planets around other stars, officials said Friday, as astronomers zero in on worlds that are ripe for research by follow-up missions like the James Webb Space Telescope.