Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander

The visible camera on NASA’s Juno spacecraft is capturing a time-lapse movie of Jupiter and its four largest moons as the orbiter dives toward the giant planet for a July 4 rendezvous, and officials have released a first taste of the views armchair scientists and space enthusiasts can anticipate over the coming weeks and months.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 10:29 a.m. EDT (1429 GMT) Wednesday with two Boeing-built communications payloads for Eutelsat and Asia Broadcast Satellite. A secondary objective to recover the first stage offshore in the Atlantic Ocean failed.

Expertise, input and advice from seasoned NASA engineers will improve SpaceX’s chances of nailing the first commercial landing on Mars as soon as late 2018, a senior space agency official said Wednesday, but Elon Musk’s space transport company will likely seek more independence from U.S. government support on later expeditions to the red planet.