Live coverage: 400th Proton rocket takes off with Russian satellite

Northrop Grumman’s launch team aborted an Antares rocket launch from Virginia’s Eastern Shore minutes before liftoff Sunday evening. The rocket is set to loft a Cygnus cargo freighter toward the International Space Station with nearly four tons of supplies and experiments.

An EchoStar communications satellite designed to link Europeans with voice and broadband data services rode into orbit on top of a Russian Proton rocket Thursday, deploying into an on-target orbit after nine hours of maneuvers by the launcher’s Breeze M upper stage.

A Russian Soyuz crew ferry craft departed the International Space Station and descended to an on-target landing in Kazakhstan on Saturday with a record-setting NASA astronaut, a veteran Russian cosmonaut and a former U.S. Air Force test pilot on-board. Undocking from the orbiting research complex occurred at 2158 GMT (5:58 p.m. EDT), with touchdown at 0121 GMT (9:21 p.m. EDT).