Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander

A Chinese spacecraft ferrying rocks drilled from the moon’s surface is on course to land back on Earth Wednesday and deliver the first fresh lunar samples to scientists since the 1970s.

China’s space agency has released images captured by a small camera ejected from the country’s first Mars-bound spacecraft, showing the probe in deep space as it nears the halfway point of its seven-month journey from Earth to the Red Planet.

Scientists announced Thursday that measurements from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft detected hydrogen gas, a key energy source for microbial life, in a plume gushing from a vast liquid water ocean buried beneath the icy shell of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.