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

The first installment of supplies and provisions tagged for launch on Orbital ATK’s next commercial supply run to the International Space Station, the company’s first since a catastrophic launch failure last year, has been loaded into the Cygnus spacecraft’s pressurized cargo section.

China’s heaviest rocket has rolled to its launch pad for liftoff Thursday with the country’s first Mars landing mission, an ambitious attempt to place an orbiter around the Red Planet and a robotic rover on the Martian surface in early 2021.

Nearly a year-and-a-half after arriving at the red planet, Europe’s ExoMars orbiter is finally approaching a planned perch around 250 miles over the rust-colored world after repeatedly dipping into the Martian atmosphere to lower its orbit.