Video: Liftoff of Atlas 5 with GPS 2F-10

China’s Long March 3B rocket, used to power navigation and communications satellites into high-altitude orbits, launched for the first time in nearly five months Sunday with two spacecraft for the country’s Beidou positioning network.

The launch of a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana with four more satellites Thursday to join SES’s O3b broadband network will help satisfy growing bandwidth demands in Latin America, Africa and the Pacific islands until the deployment of a new generation of upgraded spacecraft in 2021, SES officials said.

Tucked inside a shipping crate aboard an Air Force C-5 transport aircraft, the Navy’s next mobile communications satellite has flown from California to Florida in preparation for liftoff this summer.