Live coverage: ExoMars orbiter safely arrives at Mars, lander’s fate uncertain

Since its arrival at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August 2014, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has been surveying the surface and the environment of this curiously shaped body. Now that the comet is experiencing a brief, hot southern hemisphere summer, its south polar regions have emerged from almost five years of total darkness and it has been possible to observe them with other Rosetta instruments.

Channels seen as evidence for flowing rivers on ancient Mars may have been carved by subglacial meltwater, new research concludes.

Some of the final results sent back by ESA’s Venus Express before it plummeted down through the planet’s atmosphere have revealed it to be rippling with atmospheric waves and, at an average temperature of -157 °C, colder than anywhere on Earth. The aerobraking experiment has improved our knowledge of our planetary neighbour and holds great promise for ESA’s forthcoming ExoMars mission.