Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander

A flying drone fitted with counter-rotating blades, on-board autonomy, and a lightweight carbon-fiber fuselage will ride to the Red Planet with NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, officials announced Friday.

Ground crews at Vandenberg Air Force Base on California’s Central Coast hoisted NASA’s InSight Mars lander atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket Monday, kicking off nearly two weeks of integrated tests and checkouts before the probe’s interplanetary launch window opens May 5.

The European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover left its Airbus factory in Britain on Wednesday, heading for a round of testing in France before integration with its carrier and descent modules on pace for launch toward the Red Planet next July.