Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral with SpaceX’s ninth operational Dragon resupply flight to the International Space Station. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
Mission Reports
Japanese cargo craft departs space station
Japan’s sixth HTV supply ship departed the International Space Station on Friday and headed for a destructive re-entry over the South Pacific with trash and disused batteries from the research lab, but engineers will first use the spacecraft for a pioneering experiment to investigate a new way to remove space junk from orbit.
Mission Reports
Live coverage: Contact lost with Japanese moon lander
A commercial robotic lander developed by the Japanese company ispace was supposed to land on the moon at 12:40 p.m. EDT (1640 UTC) Tuesday, attempting to make history as the first privately-funded enterprise to achieve a controlled touchdown on the lunar surface. But mission controllers lost contact with the spacecraft just before landing.