The comet Siding Spring 2013 whizzed past Mars on Oct. 19, leaving the constellation of scientific spacecraft orbiting the planet undamaged and beginning to transmit the scientific take from their unprecedented close encounter with an Oort Cloud object.

NEW DELHI—India successfully test-launched Nirbhay—its first indigenously developed, long-range, subsonic cruise missile—more than a year after it failed to hit its target during its first launch. The 1,000-kilometer (620-mi.)-class missile, developed by the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), took off from the launch complex at Chandipur in the eastern Odisha state at 10:04 a.m. on Oct. 17, a DRDO official says.

NEW DELHI—India has changed the track of its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) to avoid any possible collision with debris from a fast-approaching comet that will whiz past the red planet on Oct. 19, a senior space scientist says. “The spacecraft has been taken to a position farthest from the tail of the comet Siding Spring so that it doesn’t affect the satellite as it comes close to Mars,” says A.S. Kiran Kumar, director of the Space Application Center, a research unit of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).