Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander

Indian engineers hope to launch the country’s first robotic lunar lander between July 9 and July 16 on India’s most powerful rocket, the head of the Indian space agency said this week.

A robotic arm extended from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft briefly contacted the rugged surface of asteroid Bennu Tuesday to gobble up pristine samples, a climactic moment in the $1 billion mission to bring asteroid material back to Earth in 2023.

Dante Lauretta, a researcher based at the University of Arizona, leads the science team on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission scheduled for launch Sept. 8 on a round-trip journey to asteroid Bennu.