Live coverage: Space station crew safely returns to Earth

NASA will say goodbye to the Spitzer Space Telescope this week after more than 16 years observing the most distant galaxies ever detected, planets orbiting other stars, and star-forming clouds of dust and gas.

A Soyuz rocket took off from French Guiana on Thursday with the SES 15 communications satellite, a craft heading for an orbit more than 22,000 miles over the equator to provide airborne wifi and aeronautical navigation services over the United States.

The liftoff of a European satellite to measure global wind fields has been delayed 24 hours to Wednesday in hopes of a better weather forecast at the Vega rocket’s launch base in French Guiana, officials announced Monday.