Live coverage: Two satellites lift off aboard Ariane 5

The tiny European Philae lander after its historic touchdown on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has apparently ended as batteries depleted and the craft fell asleep Friday night.

SpaceX launched 57 Starlink broadband satellites and a pair of Earth observation smallsats for BlackSky on top of a Falcon 9 rocket at 1:12 a.m. EDT (0512 GMT) Friday. The 90th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket took off from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Closing out a banner year of launches, an Ariane 5 rocket thundered into space Wednesday from French Guiana with two commercial communications satellites manufactured in California to expand television and broadband access in Latin America and broadcast television programming in Japan.