Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander

It will take approximately one hour for a Japanese H-2A rocket to propel the Hope Mars orbiter on a trajectory to escape Earth’s gravitational bond, kicking off a seven-month journey to the Red Planet.

The next time astronauts land on the moon, they will ride to the lunar surface in a spacecraft that looks a lot different than the Apollo-era landing module last used in 1972. Lander concepts proposed by SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics — which won a combined $967 million in NASA funding Thursday — take wildly different approaches to carrying crews to the moon.

Thirteen U.S.-built nanosatellites hitched a ride to space Tuesday with a sharp-eyed Indian Earth-imaging observatory at the top of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.