Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Vega rocket with the Sentinel 2A land imaging satellite. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
Ariane 5
Live coverage: Ariane 5 launches telecom satellites for Eutelsat, ISRO
Arianespace’s first launch of 2020 lifted off at 4:05 p.m. EST (2105 GMT; 6:05 p.m. French Guiana time) Thursday from the Guiana Space Center on the northeastern shore of South America. An Ariane 5 rocket launched the Eutelsat Konnect and GSAT 30 communications satellite for Eutelsat and the Indian Space Research Organization.
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Rosetta spacecraft heads for comet crash landing
The European Space Agency’s $1.6 billion Rosetta spacecraft closed in Thursday for a deliberate crash landing on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko early Friday, a slow-motion kamikaze plunge to bring the enormously successful mission to an end after more than two years of unprecedented close-range observations.
