Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

The European Space Agency has reserved an Ariane launcher to send a spacecraft toward Jupiter in May 2022, and the mission’s project manager said Tuesday officials could assign the probe to Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket, assuming the vehicle has a successful debut by the end of 2020.

A European-built, Turkish-owned spy satellite rocketed into orbit Monday aboard a Vega booster launched from French Guiana, part of a $300 million project to feed improved surveillance imagery to the Turkish military and advance the country’s aerospace manufacturing base.

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a three-man crew parachuted to the flat grasslands of Kazakhstan on Saturday, returning home from the International Space Station with cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, NASA astronaut Tim Kopra and British flight engineer Tim Peake.