Video: Time lapse of ATV’s final departure from ISS

A commercial Dragon supply freighter built and owned by SpaceX rocketed into a clear blue sky over Florida’s Space Coast Thursday with a menagerie of research experiments and holiday surprises heading for the International Space Station.

Entering the final months of a 12-year mission, Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is again moving closer to the oddball comet that has engaged scientists since it arrived in 2014, heading for a controlled “smash” landing on the comet’s rugged charcoal-colored surface at the end of September.

After three weeks of intense analysis and troubleshooting, European Space Agency flight controllers have finally succeeded in freeing a jammed boom critical to the Jupiter-bound JUICE probe’s ice-penetrating radar instrument.