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Live coverage of the descent and landing of Europe’s Philae spacecraft on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
Live coverage of the descent and landing of Europe’s Philae spacecraft on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
Four European navigation satellites fastened on top of an Ariane 5 rocket lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 1836:07 GMT (1:36:07 p.m. EST) Tuesday to propel the Galileo navigation network closer to global service. The Ariane 5’s upper stage delivered the spacecraft to a circular orbit more than 14,000 miles above Earth around four hours after launch.
The launch of a European Ariane 5 rocket was aborted moments after its main engine ignited Tuesday. The dramatic last-second hold was the first time an Ariane rocket launch was aborted after engine start since March 2011. Arianespace has not set a new target launch date for the mission, which will loft two U.S.-built communications satellites for Intelsat and B-SAT.
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