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

A Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off at 0541 GMT (1:41 a.m. EDT) Thursday from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East, carrying a new Russian weather satellite and 32 secondary payloads into polar orbit.

Lighting up the pre-dawn sky, a Soyuz rocket roared to life and streaked into orbit Tuesday carrying a Russian cosmonaut and two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, boosting the lab’s crew back to six and the U.S. complement to four NASA-sponsored astronauts.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral today at 7:42 p.m. EST (0042 GMT) to deploy the U.S. military’s SBIRS GEO Flight 3 observatory, equipped with advanced telescopic infrared vision to spot enemy missile launches, for early warning surveillance.