Live coverage: NASA confirms successful first flight of Mars helicopter

Crowned with a European-built communications satellite designed to broadcast television over the Americas, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a previously-flown first stage booster lifted off Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A Wednesday at 6:53 p.m. EDT (2253 GMT).

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired its nine first stage engines for a brief hold-down firing Friday at Cape Canaveral, passing a key milestone before launch July 24 with a Dragon space station resupply ship.

A Proton rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the Spektr-RG X-ray astronomy mission at 1230:57 GMT (8:30:57 a.m. EDT) Saturday.