Live coverage: Falcon 9 blasts off with X-37B mini-shuttle

Russia’s Proton rocket returned to flight Friday with the successful deployment of a powerful new communications satellite for Inmarsat of London in the workhorse rocket’s first flight since a launch failure in May.

NASA simulated an in-flight launch abort of an Orion crew capsule high above Cape Canaveral on Tuesday, in a major test of the safety system that would whisk astronauts on future moon missions away from a failing rocket.

A Soyuz rocket lifted off Friday from a jungle spaceport in South America with two satellites for Europe’s Galileo navigation network. The four-hour launch sequence began with blastoff at 2146 GMT (5:46 p.m. EDT).