The astronauts flying SpaceX back to Earth this week urged boaters to stay safe by staying away from their capsule's splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

NASA and SpaceX are promising more Coast Guard patrols and fewer pleasure boaters for Wednesday afternoon's planned splashdown off the Florida panhandle coast near Tallahassee—the company's second return of a crew.

A Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Vostochny cosmodrome in Russia's Far East on Monday carrying 36 UK telecommunications and internet satellites, the Roscosmos space agency said.

OneWeb, a London-headquartered company, is working to complete the construction of a constellation of low earth orbit satellites providing enhanced broadband and other services to countries around the world.

The company is competing against billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the race to provide fast internet via satellites for the world's remote areas.

Images released by Russia's space agency Roscosmos showed the Soyuz rocket taking off against hazy skies Monday morning at 7:14 am local time (2214 GMT).

"All satellites have been successfully placed in target orbits and have been taken under customer control," Roscosmos said in a statement.

"Mission success!" OneWeb wrote on Twitter.

The UK company plans for its global commercial internet service to be operational by next year, supported by some 650 satellites.

Monday's launch was the third batch of its satellites placed into orbit from Russia, with earlier launches from the Vostochny cosmodrome of 36 satellites each taking place last month and in December.

OneWeb's first six satellites were also launched by a Russian-made Soyuz rocket, taking off from the space centre in Kourou in French Guiana in February 2019.

On March 3, 2021, engineers completed a successful test deployment of the GOES-T solar array as part of a series of tests to prepare the satellite for a planned December 2021 launch.

This critical test verified that the satellite's large, five-panel solar array—which is folded up when the satellite is launched—will properly deploy when GOES-T reaches geostationary orbit. During this test, engineers unfurled the five panels on rails that simulated the zero-gravity environment of space. Each solar panel is approximately 13 feet tall by 4.5 feet wide and weighs approximately 45 pounds.

Once GOES-T reaches orbit, the deployed solar panels will form a single solar array wing that will rotate once per day to continuously point its photovoltaic (solar) cells toward the sun. These cells will convert solar energy into electricity to power the entire satellite, including the instruments, computers, data processors, sensors, and telecommunications equipment. The solar array will generate more than 5,000 watts of power for the satellite.