Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

A flying drone fitted with counter-rotating blades, on-board autonomy, and a lightweight carbon-fiber fuselage will ride to the Red Planet with NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, officials announced Friday.

NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken returned to Earth Sunday with an on-target splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico at 2:48 p.m. EDT (1848 GMT) Sunday. The astronauts completed a two-month stay on the International Space Station on a test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Four weeks, three launches, two coasts. October was an unprecedented month for United Launch Alliance and its venerable workhorse rocket.