Live coverage: Soyuz soars into space on its fourth launch attempt

Three experimental satellites sponsored by the U.S. military lifted off on an Electron rocket from Rocket Lab’s commercial spaceport in New Zealand on Sunday at 0600 GMT (2 a.m. EDT).

Track the progress of the MASCOT lander, a tiny robot developed in Germany and France, as it explores asteroid Ryugu for a daring mission to hop across the austere world’s boulder-strewn landscape, taking pictures and collecting scientific data along the way. The robotic probe was released from the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft around 0200 GMT Wednesday (10 p.m. EDT Tuesday), and touched down a few minutes later.

After criss-crossing Europe for a decade, the LISA Pathfinder satellite testbed has reached its last stop before launch in early December on a mission to demonstrate the delicate technologies required to detect elusive low-frequency gravitational waves rippling through the cosmos.