Live coverage of the final descent and touchdown of India’s Vikram lander on the moon. Text updates will appear automatically below.
ISRO’s live video webcast of Vikram’s landing on the moon begins at 1940 GMT (3:40 p.m. EDT) Friday.
Mission Reports
Crucial first fueling test on tap for SLS core stage later this month
If all goes according to plan, engineers in southern Mississippi later this month will load cryogenic propellants into the core stage of a rocket NASA says will launch astronauts back to the moon, exposing its tankage and internal plumbing to extreme operating conditions hundreds of degrees below zero for the first time. The fueling test — a major milestone in its own right — is a precursor to a high-stakes eight-minute test-firing of the Space Launch System’s four shuttle-era main engines planned as soon as November.
Ariane 5
Ariane 5 launches two satellites on 7-year voyage to Mercury
A powerful European Ariane 5 rocket blasted off from French Guiana late Friday and boosted a pair of satellites into space for a seven-year plunge into the inner solar system, a voyage requiring seven planetary flybys to slow down enough in the sun’s gravitational clutches to slip into orbit around hellish Mercury.