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

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.

Continuing support of the International Space Station amid the coronavirus pandemic, Russian teams transferred a Soyuz rocket to a launch pad in Kazakhstan on Wednesday in preparation for liftoff with a Progress resupply freighter.

SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 rocket arrived at Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A on Thursday for a hold-down engine firing ahead of launch next week with the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane. The brief engine ignition occurred at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT).