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

Russian Soyuz commander Alexander Misurkin and two U.S. astronauts — flight engineers Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba — lifted off Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio began their six-hour journey to the International Space Station with a launch aboard a Soyuz rocket at 2117 GMT (5:17 p.m. EDT), and docking occurred at 0255 GMT (10:55 p.m. EDT).

An Indian radar observation satellite designed to collect information on natural disasters, pollution and monitor the military activity of India’s neighbors lifted off at 4:55 a.m. EST (0955 GMT) Wednesday on top of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, the second PSLV mission in two weeks.

China led the world with 34 orbital launch attempts in 2019 — including two failures — followed by 22 flights from Russian-operated launch pads and 21 satellite delivery missions originating from U.S. spaceports, all of which were successful.