Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

Views from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released Friday show the crash site where Europe’s Schiaparelli lander fell to the red planet’s surface from a height of several miles, leaving a distinct dark patch on the Martian landscape.

A U.S.-built commercial communications craft owned by Intelsat and a new node for Europe’s laser data relay satellite network rocketed into orbit Tuesday from Kourou, French Guiana, on top of an Ariane 5 rocket.

Just before settling to a soft crash landing Friday, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft captured close-range images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, peering into a stadium-sized pit and recording a final dataset to keep scientists busy long after the mission’s end.