Live coverage: Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

A new European satellite carrying instruments to track changes in the world’s oceans, measure receding ice sheets and chart vegetation growth climbed into orbit Wednesday on top of a Russian Rockot launcher.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7:10 p.m. EST Monday (0010 GMT Tuesday) with the JCSAT 18/Kacific 1 communications satellite, heading for a position in geostationary orbit to beam broadband signals across the Asia-Pacific. The launcher deployed the satellite into an on-target orbit, and the first stage returned to land on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

The launch of an EchoStar communications satellite to cover Europe has been delayed to October to allow Russian engineers to complete an inquiry into a glitch suffered during a Proton rocket flight in June, industry officials said.