Time-lapse video: The Falcon Heavy goes vertical again

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.

Running nearly two months late after technical concerns prevented liftoff last year, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired into the sky Sunday night from Cape Canaveral with a top secret payload for the U.S. government, the first of some 30 launches on the company’s docket in 2018.

A Falcon 9 rocket powered by a reused first stage booster rolled out Tuesday to pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a day before its scheduled liftoff with an Airbus-built communications satellite designed for television broadcasts over the Americas.