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

Boosted off planet Earth by a Russian Proton rocket, a European-built space probe departed for Mars on Monday, beginning a mission to test future landing technologies and search for methane, a potential signature of microbial life.

Research teams across Europe spent the last half-year meticulously going through a wish list of experiments for the Philae comet lander without knowing whether they would ever get a chance to execute the tasks.

Running low on fuel after completing the first global survey of Mercury, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft could get an extra month of time at the solar system’s innermost planet thanks to a crafty new way of using helium gas to temporarily forestall the mission’s end next year.