Live coverage: India’s Chandrayaan 2 moon mission blasts off

Six weeks after launching from Cape Canaveral, an Israeli-built probe funded through private donations arrived in orbit around the moon Thursday, setting the the stage for the mission’s final descent to the lunar surface April 11.

United Launch Alliance recently raised a Delta 4-Heavy rocket, one of four left in the company’s backlog, vertical on its launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in preparation for liftoff with a top secret U.S. government spy satellite at the end of April.

NASA is examining options to launch a robotic mission as soon as 2026 to pick up rock specimens from the surface of Mars and bring them back to Earth, moving forward the timeline for a sample return mission as the agency postpones plans for a new Mars reconnaissance and data relay orbiter.