Live coverage: Soyuz crew returns to Earth

A Boeing-built communications satellite lifted off at 7:21 p.m. EDT (2321 GMT) Monday on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft will add to Inmarsat’s Global Xpress network linking airplanes, ships and other mobile terminals with broadband Internet and data services.

The 81st flight of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, set for liftoff Friday from Cape Canaveral, will come with its share of firsts when it sends Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule toward the International Space Station on an unpiloted test flight. The launcher will fly without a payload shroud, which typically envelopes satellites during liftoff, and it will debut an uprated dual-engine Centaur upper stage that will power the Starliner on a unique suborbital trajectory optimized for astronaut comfort.

With lingering uncertainty about when new U.S. commercial vehicles can regularly carry crews to the space station, NASA said Tuesday it will pay the Russian space agency more than $90 million for a round-trip ticket to the International Space Station on a Soyuz spacecraft later this year.