Video: Rosetta scientist Matt Taylor on the end of mission

China’s space agency said Friday the country’s first Mars rover safely touched down and began sending data back to Earth, joining the United States as the only two nations to successfully land and operate a spacecraft on the surface of the Red Planet.

A European supply freighter is set to undock from the International Space Station on Saturday, heading for a destructive dive into Earth’s atmosphere about 30 hours later after a power system failure forced the cancellation of an experiment to observe the dynamics of the re-entry of a large spacecraft.

The launch of NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is less than a year away, and the steady pace of work inside the craft’s pristine assembly hall in California is keeping the mission on schedule for liftoff from Cape Canaveral next July, despite growing costs, according to mission managers.