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

A decommissioned missile originally built in Russia to deliver nuclear weapons to intercontinental targets in the United States vaulted out of a vertical canister Friday and fired into space with a European satellite to monitor global air pollution.

The first six broadband satellites for OneWeb, which envisions a constellation of hundreds of orbiting relay stations beaming Internet signals down to Earth, lifted off Wednesday aboard a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana. Launch occurred at 2137 GMT (4:37 p.m. EST).

A Japanese H-2A rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 0017:46 GMT Thursday (8:17:46 p.m. EDT Wednesday) with the Michibiki 2 navigation satellite designed to improve positioning and timing services over Japan.