Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

Arianespace will pair a Peruvian military reconnaissance satellite with a package of four commercial Skybox Earth imaging spacecraft on a Vega rocket launch in 2016.

A colorful sunset Tuesday created a dramatic backdrop to Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket, poised on its launch pad at the edge of the Amazon jungle for its 82nd 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).