Watch a replay of the Soyuz launch and abort

Armed with $460 million in fresh financing to grow its broadband communications capacity, O3b Networks has selected Thales Alenia Space to build eight new satellites and Arianespace to launch at least four of them aboard a Soyuz rocket in 2018.

Working under close supervision from ground controllers more than 200 million miles away, the robotic arm on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has begun placing specimens collected from an asteroid last week into a return capsule to bring the material back to Earth in 2023, officials said Wednesday.

NASA’s nuclear-powered Perseverance rover is set to arrive at Mars on Thursday with a make-or-break entry, descent, and landing. The rover will execute the arrival autonomously, while engineers and scientists back on Earth will have a nail-biting 11-minute wait for signals to reach home confirming the fate of the $2.7 billion mission.