The mission was scheduled to launch less than an hour before a Starlink flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Liftoff happened at 3:43 a.m. EDT (0743 UTC).

The Starlink 17-7 mission is the penultimate planned launch of these broadband satellites in August. SpaceX is targeting liftoff from pad 4E at 9:59 p.m. PDT (12:59 a.m. EDT / 0459 UTC).

Track the progress of the MASCOT lander, a tiny robot developed in Germany and France, as it explores asteroid Ryugu for a daring mission to hop across the austere world’s boulder-strewn landscape, taking pictures and collecting scientific data along the way. The robotic probe was released from the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft around 0200 GMT Wednesday (10 p.m. EDT Tuesday), and touched down a few minutes later.