Snapshots: Soyuz takes off

Northrop Grumman called off the launch of an Antares rocket and a Cygnus space station cargo freighter Thursday night on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, the third aborted countdown in less than 24 hours for three different U.S. rockets.

NASA’s InSight lander has placed a protective enclosure over a French-developed seismometer designed to detect tremors on Mars, completing the deployment of the first of two science instruments delivered to the Red Planet in November.

A German-built landing probe the size of a microwave oven carrying a camera and a suite of scientific instruments was closing in on an asteroid Tuesday, riding aboard Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft to join two other robots deployed to the asteroid’s surface last month.