Live coverage: Crew-8 splashdown off the coast of Pensacola, Florida

A batch of rockets will support sending up to about 60 of AST SpaceMobile’s Block 2 BlueBird satellites to orbit. The company’s goal is to establish a space-based cellular broadband network.

Sporting a new blue and white paint scheme to mark the upcoming 60th anniversary of the first human spaceflight, a Russian Soyuz rocket loaded with 38 international satellites has rolled out to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan ahead of a planned liftoff Saturday.

After crystallizing a partnership to retrieve samples from the surface of Mars and return them to Earth, NASA and European Space Agency officials are seeking government funding commitments before the end of this year to carry out a multibillion-dollar robotic mission that could depart Earth with a pair of rocket launches as soon as 2026.