Live coverage: India’s Chandrayaan 2 moon mission blasts off

Opening a new era in American spaceflight, a Falcon 9 rocket streaked into space early Saturday, boosting the company’s first Crew Dragon spacecraft into orbit on an unpiloted test flight, the first launch of a commercially developed capsule intended to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

The United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket fired away from Cape Canaveral at 1:51 p.m. EDT today to deploy a covert surveillance satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.

A Chinese spacecraft ferrying rocks drilled from the moon’s surface is on course to land back on Earth Wednesday and deliver the first fresh lunar samples to scientists since the 1970s.