Live coverage: ExoMars orbiter steers into orbit around Mars, lander’s fate TBD

A package of five satellites, including an Italian radar reconnaissance craft and a European Space Agency exoplanet science probe, soared into orbit Wednesday from French Guiana aboard a Russian-made Soyuz rocket.

In a complex bit of orbital surgery, two spacewalking astronauts cut into a $2 billion cosmic ray detector Friday, venting away life-sustaining carbon dioxide refrigerant and then snipping eight coolant lines the size of soda straws to prepare the high-tech “patient” for a coolant pump transplant.

A Japanese space probe picked up just the right amount of speed when it flew by Earth earlier this month, using the planet’s gravity to slingshot toward an asteroid scientists think is a primordial leftover from the ancient solar system, mission managers said Monday.