Live coverage: Ariane 5 soars into space from Kourou

Four satellites designed to broadcast high-speed Internet signals to the developing world are mounted on top of a Russian-made Soyuz rocket for liftoff Thursday from the Guiana Space Center in South America. See photos of the quartet of satellites undergoing launch preparations.

One day after a Soyuz crew transport rolled out to a launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a similar Russian booster made a comparable journey Monday halfway around the world in tropical French Guiana for liftoff Thursday with two European Galileo navigation satellites.

SpaceX debuted a more reusable, higher-thrust model of the Falcon 9 rocket Friday, hauling Bangladesh’s first communications satellite into orbit from Florida’s Space Coast.