Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

NASA’s ICESat 2 satellite has been bolted atop a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as ground teams prepare for the final liftoff of the workhorse launcher Sept. 15.

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).

SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 rocket Friday, this time to deliver 56 more Starlink internet satellites into orbit. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station occurred at 11:43 a.m. EDT (1543 UTC). The first stage booster landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.