Live coverage: Soyuz launches on 13th flight from French Guiana

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 10:29 a.m. EDT (1429 GMT) Wednesday with two Boeing-built communications payloads for Eutelsat and Asia Broadcast Satellite. A secondary objective to recover the first stage offshore in the Atlantic Ocean failed.

Europe’s first mission to Mercury, a quartet of Galileo navigation spacecraft, the world’s first global winds observatory, and a new European weather satellite have arrived at an equatorial launch base in French Guiana in preparation for launches in the coming months.

A commercial Dragon cargo capsule is heading back to Earth Tuesday to conclude a 31-day stay at the International Space Station. The SpaceX-owned spacecraft was released from the station’s Canadian-built robotic arm at 10:59 a.m. EDT (1459 GMT), and the Dragon supply ship splashed down in the Pacific Ocean with nearly 3,400 pounds of cargo at 4:21 p.m. EDT (2021 GMT).