Live coverage: Perseverance rover lands on Mars

Former Johnson Space Center Director Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., the man who created the iconic role of NASA flight director during the Mercury and Gemini programs and whose no-nonsense, uncompromising management style defined control room operations and discipline through the Apollo years and beyond, died Monday. He was 95.

The first images from the European-built Solar Orbiter mission are the closest ever taken of the sun, revealing previously unseen mini-flares nicknamed “campfires” that may offer hints about what makes the solar corona, or outer atmosphere, hotter than the sun’s surface.

Two communications satellites built in California launched Saturday aboard the third Ariane 5 flight of the year after unacceptable upper level winds kept the rocket grounded Friday. The European rocket lifted off from French Guiana at 2138 GMT (5:38 p.m. EDT) with payloads for DISH Network and BRI, a major Indonesian bank.