Live coverage: Europe’s Mars mission launches

French astrophotographer Thierry Legault travelled to the suburbs of Philadelphia, USA to capture both the International Space Station and planet Mercury transiting the Sun on 9 May. This image includes multiple stacked frames to show the Station’s path in the fraction of a second it took to cross the Sun, while Mercury appears as a black dot at bottom-centre.

Europe’s LISA Pathfinder mission crafted to demonstrate the ability to detect gravitational waves — theorised ubiquitous cosmic signals that have so far eluded discovery — has arrived at its operating post around the L1 Lagrange point nearly a million miles from Earth.

A Russian Proton rocket rolled out to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, riding a specially-built rail car with Europe’s ExoMars mission bound for the red planet.