Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander

SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy launch for the U.S. Air Force took a major step closer to liftoff with a hold-down engine firing Wednesday night at launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff with a cluster of experimental satellites and weather monitoring craft is set for June 24.

A dozen SuperDove nanosatellites with improved vision are set to join Planet’s Earth-observing fleet Tuesday night (U.S. time) after riding into orbit aboard an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle alongside an Indian mapping payload.

Now more than two years outbound from its historic encounter with Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is on target for a fleeting flyby less than 2,200 miles from 2014 MU69, an icy, city-sized world set to become the most distant object ever visited, just after midnight Jan. 1, 2019, on the U.S. East Coast. Scientists now say the probe may be able to pursue another destination some time in the 2020s.