Live coverage: International Space Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is being lowered from the belly of the Perseverance rover this week as ground teams run through a choreographed long-distance command sequence to safely release the $80 million rotorcraft onto the surface of Mars.

NASA’s InSight spacecraft, the next lander to head for Mars, lifted off Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. Launch occurred in a blanket of fog at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT; 1105 GMT).

Blue Origin teams in West Texas are preparing for another launch of the company’s reusable New Shepard suborbital rocket Thursday to loft dozens of microgravity research payloads to the edge of space.