Live coverage: Orion lands in Pacific

A Vega rocket has blasted off with Europe’s LISA Pathfinder tech demo mission, a probe heading to a station a million miles from Earth to test systems for a future gravitational wave observatory. Liftoff from French Guiana occurred at 0404 GMT Thursday (11:04 p.m. EST Wednesday).

The towering structure to be used for liftoffs of NASA’s Space Launch System rolled from a construction site to launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week, arriving at the seaside complex Friday for a week of fit checks.

Joining the live video podcast on Friday, April 12, are Elizabeth Howell, staff writer for Space.com, and Bill Harwood, space consultant for CBS News. The show begins at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 UTC) on the Spaceflight Now YouTube channel.