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

Europe’s Sentinel 5P satellite, fitted with a Dutch-developed spectrometer to measure gases in Earth’s atmosphere, was fueled and mated to its Russian Rockot booster over the last month at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a military complex around 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow.

Rocket Lab’s second launch in a little more than a week blasted off from New Zealand at 5:14 a.m. EDT (0914 UTC) Friday with two commercial Earth observation satellites for BlackSky. The Electron rocket’s first stage booster successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean for recovery.

A Soyuz rocket is scheduled for launch Friday with Russia’s Resurs P2 satellite, a civilian-operated spacecraft with a sharp-eyed camera to collect high-resolution imagery for Russian government authorities and international agencies.