Live coverage: Proton fires into space with Eutelsat 9B

Fifteen years after accomplishing the first-ever landing on Saturn’s moon Titan, lessons learned from the European Space Agency’s Huygens spacecraft continue aiding designers of future planetary probes, according to new results from a study looking at why the landing craft spun the wrong way as it descended through Titan’s thick, hazy atmosphere.

SpaceX technicians at Cape Canaveral are readying for the first launch of an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket configuration next week, a mission that will debut changes to make the launcher safer for astronauts and make it easier — and less expensive — for the company to reuse first stage boosters.

SpaceX’s second Falcon 9 flight of the year lifted off Jan. 31 from Cape Canaveral with GovSat 1, a U.S.-built satellite funded by SES and the government of Luxembourg to provide secure communications for military and civil defense authorities.