Live coverage: Space station crew safely returns to Earth

Launching the sixth mission of the U.S. military’s super-secret X-37B spaceplane program, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off Sunday morning from Cape Canaveral and successfully delivered its clandestine cargo to orbit.

The Perseverance rover’s sterilized sample tubes — designed to seal Martian rock and sediment for eventual return to Earth — are installed on the spacecraft as teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center prepare to enclose the rover inside the payload shroud of its Atlas 5 launcher for liftoff July 20.

A European spacecraft cruising toward Mars fired its main engine Thursday, tweaking its trajectory and helping set up for carefully-choreographed simultaneous maneuvers Oct. 19 to place part of the tandem mission into orbit around the red planet and deposit a stationary battery-powered lander on the Martian surface.