Live coverage: SpaceX supply ship departs station, returns to Earth

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket darted into a partly cloudy sky over Florida’s Space Coast with a roar Thursday afternoon, carrying the Japanese-built Es’hail 2 communications satellite into space to beam commercial video and data services across the Middle East and expand connectivity for Qatar’s military.

The International Space Station’s robotic arm, under the control of engineers on Earth, extracted an experimental inflatable habitat from the trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon supply ship Saturday and attached it to the orbiting complex.

For the second time in seven weeks, SpaceX, Telesat and SSL teamed up for a commercial satellite launch from Cape Canaveral early Monday, this time successfully deploying into orbit a high-power telecom payload developed in a joint venture with a Hong Kong-based company.