Live coverage: Proton rocket blasts off on lengthy 15-hour mission

India’s most powerful communications satellite will soon be flown back to its manufacturing plant in Bangalore for additional checks, officials said this week, forcing Arianespace to scrap plans for an Ariane 5 launch in late May that was to be co-manifested with a U.S.-built television broadcast satellite for Intelsat and the government of Azerbaijan.

A new sunshade, or visor, designed to reduce the brightness of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband Internet satellites will debut on the company’s next launch, a measure intended to alleviate astronomers’ concerns about impacts on observations through ground-based telescopes, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Monday.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stood atop historic launch pad 39A Saturday afternoon as teams counted down to liftoff with 52 more Starlink internet satellites  and two hitchhiker payloads.