Live coverage: SpaceX resumes launches from California

A Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off at 0541 GMT (1:41 a.m. EDT) Thursday from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East, carrying a new Russian weather satellite and 32 secondary payloads into polar orbit.

A Delta 2 rocket boosted by nine strap-on motors and two liquid-fueled stages will launch NOAA’s JPSS 1 weather satellite into a 511-mile-high (822-kilometer) orbit following liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

Setting new commercial launch and satellite industry records, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket propelled by a first stage booster launched and recovered two times before soared into a clear morning sky over California’s Central Coast on Monday with 64 small satellites, then returned to a pinpoint landing on a vessel parked offshore in the Pacific Ocean, potentially to be flown again.