Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander

An Ariane 5 rocket fired off a launch pad in French Guiana Tuesday with nearly 3 million pounds of thundering thrust, heading to orbit with India’s heaviest satellite designed to expand broadband coverage across the South Asian nation, and a South Korean weather satellite carrying an U.S.-built imager to track storms and cyclones across the Asia-Pacific.

NASA’s Cassini orbiter sailed through the tenuous outermost reaches of Saturn’s atmosphere without trouble Monday, performing the first of five close swings nearer to the planet than any previous spacecraft before a final dive Sept. 15 to end the probe’s nearly 20-year mission.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 4:18 p.m. EDT (2018 GMT), following a delay of more than an hour to troubleshoot a ground hydraulics controller. The Atlas 5 launched with the U.S. military’s sixth Advanced Extremely High Frequency strategic communications satellite.