Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 4:39 a.m. PDT (7:39 a.m. EDT; 1139 GMT) Wednesday, and SpaceX successfully landed the rocket’s first stage on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. The mission’s primary objective is the deployment of 10 Iridium Next communications satellites into low Earth orbit.

Views from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released Friday show the crash site where Europe’s Schiaparelli lander fell to the red planet’s surface from a height of several miles, leaving a distinct dark patch on the Martian landscape.

Putting new technology in the sky that will beam high-speed Internet to rural America, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral today to deploy the commercial EchoStar 19 satellite. Follow the ascent in our live journal.