Live coverage: Proton blasts off on return-to-flight mission

Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft closed out a historic 4.9-billion-mile journey Friday with a slow-speed crash into the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the tiny world it has studied for the last two years, capturing some of the mission’s best science data to help unravel the inner workings of the comet. Confirmation of the crash landing arrived on Earth at 1119 GMT (7:19 a.m. EDT).

A new communications spacecraft for Hispasat, a Spanish communications satellite operator, will get a boost from a Russian Proton rocket Monday toward an orbital position more than 22,000 miles above Earth.

Launch preparations for the SES 10 communications satellite, the first spacecraft to ride a reused Falcon 9 booster to space, are on track for a late March blastoff from Florida, officials said.