Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

A European satellite hosting a spaceborne laser crafted to measure winds in Earth’s atmosphere rode a Vega launcher into orbit Wednesday from French Guiana, a thundering sendoff for a three-year mission that could improve global weather forecasts.

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).

An Ariane 5 rocket lifted off Thursday at 2345 GMT (7:45 p.m. EDT), flying from a French Guiana launch pad to geostationary transfer orbit with the ViaSat 2 and Eutelsat 172B communications satellites.