Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

On the eve of its scheduled flight for U.S. national security interests, the United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket stands quietly inside the protective gantry at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 37 pad.

Eight days after a dramatic spacewalk to inspect the site of a leak in the hull of his Soyuz ferry ship, Russian commander Sergey Prokopyev, German flight engineer Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor geared up to depart the International Space Station Wednesday for a fiery plunge back to Earth.

Sensors delivered to Mars by NASA’s InSight lander have detected the first signals suggesting seismic activity on the red planet, a major discovery that extends the field of seismology to a new world beyond the Earth and the moon.