Live coverage: Vega rocket blasts off from French Guiana on commercial flight

The Emirates Mars Mission, the first deep space probe from the Arab world, steered into orbit around the Red Planet on Tuesday to cap a 307 million-mile (494 million-kilometer), 205-day interplanetary voyage from Earth and begin a science mission studying the Martian climate. The critical 27-minute Mars Orbit Insertion maneuver began at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT).

A land imaging satellite soared to a 300-mile-high perch above Earth Saturday after lifting off on top of a Long March 2D rocket from the Jiuquan space base in the Gobi Desert, joining a similar military reconnaissance craft launched earlier this month in the same type of orbit.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is set to roll to its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral, a day before liftoff with a new-generation NOAA weather satellite. The launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a Spanish communications satellite is expected to be shuffled after the Atlas 5 flight in a rapid-fire launch sequence at the Florida spaceport this week.