Live coverage: India’s Chandrayaan 2 moon mission blasts off

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket fired into space Thursday from Cape Canaveral with a $1.1 billion U.S. Air Force communications satellite, delivering fresh capacity for the military’s voice, video and data relay networks.

A Spanish-owned, U.S.-built commercial communications satellite climbed into orbit early Tuesday from Cape Canaveral on the 50th flight of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launching on a 15-year mission to relay video, data and broadband signals across the Americas, Europe and North Africa.

Two U.S. astronauts flanked a veteran Russian cosmonaut Thursday for a ride back to Earth from the International Space Station. The trio undocked from the station in their Soyuz spacecraft at 0757 GMT (3:57 a.m. EDT), beginning a return flight that culminated in a parachute-assisted landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan at 1145 GMT (7:45 a.m. EDT).