Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

For the second time this year, SpaceX has launched a commercial communications satellite for Tokyo-based SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. A Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 1:26 a.m. EDT (0526 GMT) from Cape Canaveral with the JCSAT 16 satellite to relay data and video across Japan and the Asia-Pacific. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster nailed a landing on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean a few minutes later.

Japan’s seventh HTV resupply mission to the International Space Station blasted off from Tanegashima Island on Saturday aboard an H-2B rocket. The unpiloted cargo carrier launched at 1752 GMT (1:52 p.m. EDT), kicking off a nearly five-day pursuit of the space station.

The Perseverance rover’s sterilized sample tubes — designed to seal Martian rock and sediment for eventual return to Earth — are installed on the spacecraft as teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center prepare to enclose the rover inside the payload shroud of its Atlas 5 launcher for liftoff July 20.