Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander

SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 rocket Friday, this time to deliver 56 more Starlink internet satellites into orbit. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station occurred at 11:43 a.m. EDT (1543 UTC). The first stage booster landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX is preparing this week for the second flight of the upgraded “Block 5” version of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket, and a hold-down firing of the booster was accomplished Wednesday at Cape Canaveral ahead of a middle-of-the-night launch this weekend with a Canadian-owned commercial communications satellite. The static fire test occurred at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) Wednesday.

NASA’s Perseverance rover, contained inside its aeroshell for a searing plunge into the Martian atmosphere next year, has been cocooned inside the payload shroud of its Atlas 5 launcher and mated with the rocket ahead of liftoff from Cape Canaveral scheduled for July 30.