Live coverage: NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter

An ambitious mission of exploration launched from Japan at 0422 GMT Wednesday (11:22 p.m. EST Tuesday). An H-2A rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center with Hayabusa 2, starting a six-year journey to collect rocks from an asteroid and return them to Earth.

A European-built Ariane 5 rocket launched Tuesday with a U.S.-made communications satellite for Tokyo-based Sky Perfect JSAT and a South Korean environmental observatory. The heavy-lift Ariane 5 launcher took off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, at 5:18 p.m. EST (2218 GMT; 7:18 p.m. French Guiana time).

These photos and a time lapse video from the European Space Agency chronicle the final preparations for launch of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, spacecraft from the Guiana Space Center on the second-to-last Ariane 5 rocket.