Live coverage: Europe’s Mars mission launches

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover successfully captured its first rock sample from the floor of Jezero Crater after an initial failure.

Emboldened by renewed contact with Europe’s comet lander, engineers are repositioning the mission’s Rosetta mothership this week to establish a reliable a communications link with the dishwasher-sized Philae landing craft, a prerequisite for resuming a science campaign abbreviated by a power shortfall last year.

The European Space Agency’s Philae lander captured this blurred view during its first bounce after first contacting the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November.