Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

A Vega rocket lifted off from a tropical launch pad in French Guiana at 1351 GMT (8:51 a.m. EST) Monday with Gokturk 1, a sharp-eyed reconnaissance satellite built in France and owned by the Turkish armed forces.

A Russian rocket released two Galileo navigation satellites nearly 15,000 miles above Earth early Friday, adding to a growing fleet giving Europe an independent space-based positioning system tracking automobiles, airplanes and cell phone-carrying people around the world.

Scientists examining imagery from Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft have logged numerous changes to the face of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, from collapsing cliffs to a growing crack through the comet’s neck that could foretell the eventual unraveling of the city-sized icy world.