Live coverage: Soyuz crew capsule departs station, lands in Kazakhstan

Ground crews plan to load the final cargo into SpaceX’s Dragon supply ship Saturday after the capsule’s Falcon 9 rocket booster briefly fired up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral for a flight readiness check.

Arianespace launched a solid-fueled Vega rocket from French Guiana at 9:51 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0151 GMT Thursday) after delays of more than five months caused by the coronavirus pandemic and unfavorable upper level winds. The Italian-built launcher will deploy 53 small satellites into orbit.

Water molecules have been directly detected across sunlit regions of the moon, not just in ultra-cold, permanently shadowed polar craters, scientists announced Monday, indicating the precious resource may be more easily accessible to future astronauts than previously thought.