Live coverage: Chinese sample return spacecraft completes docking in lunar orbit

A failure during the second stage burn of a Rocket Lab Electron rocket caused seven small commercial satellites to crash back to Earth Saturday following liftoff from New Zealand.

Europe’s new Aeolus winds observatory blasted off at 2120 GMT (5:20 p.m. EDT) Wednesday aboard a solid-fueled Vega rocket from French Guiana, kicking off a three-year mission to chart the motion of Earth’s atmosphere.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will boost NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-M, or TDRS-M, into space from Cape Canaveral on Aug. 18 at 8:03 a.m. EDT (1203 GMT).