Live coverage: ExoMars orbiter steers into orbit around Mars, lander’s fate TBD

The European Space Agency’s $550 million Aeolus science mission, the product of a drawn-out 16-year development effort that required engineers to master new technologies, is in the starting blocks on a launch pad in French Guiana awaiting liftoff Wednesday to monitor wind speeds from space for the first time on a global scale.

This detailed mission timeline covers major vehicle and crew activities during the Crew-2 countdown and rendezvous with the International Space Station.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft ran out of fuel Wednesday and stopped transmitting to Earth, ending an 11-year mission that explored the two largest objects in the asteroid belt and set several records in the annals of space history.