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

Indian ground teams lost contact with a robotic lunar lander and rover minutes before their scheduled touchdown near the moon’s south pole. India was attempting to become the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the moon.

NASA is moving forward with a crucial test-firing of the core stage of the first Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket as soon as Jan. 17 after engineers were satisfied with the results of a fueling test last month.

Rocket Lab’s first launch of the year lifted off Thursday at 7:27 p.m. EDT (2327 GMT) after a four-day delay to replace a video transmitter and wait for improved weather. The company’s Electron rocket launched from Mahia Peninsula on New Zealand’s North Island with a technology demonstration satellite for DARPA, the U.S. military research and development agency.