Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander

In the final days of a three-and-a-half year pursuit, Japan’s Hayabusa 2 sample return spacecraft is beaming back clearer images of asteroid Ryugu, an unexplored object that scientists say resembles a spinning top or dumpling nearly 180 million miles from Earth.

SpaceX launched Argentina’s SAOCOM 1B radar observation satellite from Cape Canaveral at 7:18 p.m. EDT (2318 GMT) Sunday. A Falcon 9 rocket headed toward the south on a trajectory hugging the Florida East Coast on the first flight into polar orbit from Cape Canaveral since 1969, and the first stage booster returned to the spaceport for an onshore landing minutes after liftoff.

The first of up to 22 launches on Arianespace’s schedule in 2020 successfully delivered a commercial European broadband satellite and an Indian communications payload to orbit Thursday using a heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket.