Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander

A batch of rockets will support sending up to about 60 of AST SpaceMobile’s Block 2 BlueBird satellites to orbit. The company’s goal is to establish a space-based cellular broadband network.

A European-built orbiter designed to seek out the source of methane on Mars slipped into orbit around the red planet Wednesday after a seven-month interplanetary journey, but mission control lost contact with an experimental landing probe just before touchdown.

The Perseverance rover’s sterilized sample tubes — designed to seal Martian rock and sediment for eventual return to Earth — are installed on the spacecraft as teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center prepare to enclose the rover inside the payload shroud of its Atlas 5 launcher for liftoff July 20.