Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

Officials working on India’s Mars orbiter project are finalizing plans for a six-month science campaign after the spacecraft arrived in orbit last week, an achievement that has already satisfied the mission’s primary objectives, the head of India’s space agency said.

In a mission marking the end of an era, NASA astronaut and former virus hunter Kate Rubins, using NASA’s last currently contracted seat on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, blasts off Wednesday with two cosmonaut crewmates on a flight to the International Space Station.

NASA has partially restored the Hubble Space Telescope to science mode after a software error temporarily halted observations, but engineers continue studying a problem that kept the telescope’s aperture door from closing and a separate concern with Hubble’s main camera.