Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander

For the first time in nearly 30 years, the U.S. Department of Energy has produced a sample of plutonium-238, the radioactive isotope used to power deep space missions, good news for future NASA space probes heading to destinations starved of sunlight.

The launch of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has been delayed two days to July 22 after an issue with ground support equipment at the Kennedy Space Center held up encapsulation of the spacecraft inside the payload fairing of its Atlas 5 rocket.

The four RS-25 engines at the bottom of NASA’s first Space Launch System core stage shut down about a minute into a ground test-firing Saturday that was supposed to last more than eight minutes.