Live coverage: Minotaur-C rocket launches with cluster of satellites

NASA’s robotic InSight spacecraft, carrying a pair of European-built science instruments, successfully landed Monday on a broad, flat equatorial Martian plain named Elysium Planitia. Touchdown was confirmed at 2:54 p.m. EST (1954 GMT) to begin a science mission focused on studying the deep interior of Mars.

Russia sent a spy satellite into orbit aboard a Soyuz rocket Feb. 2 from a snowy launch pad at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, setting off on a mission to detect, locate, and characterize foreign military radio signals.

A Long March 6 booster took off Tuesday from China with three commercial Earth observation satellites designed to record high-definition video and color imagery from a perch more than 300 miles above the planet.