Q&A with Alvaro Gimenez, ESA’s director of science

The Emirates Mars Mission, the first deep space probe from the Arab world, steered into orbit around the Red Planet on Tuesday to cap a 307 million-mile (494 million-kilometer), 205-day interplanetary voyage from Earth and begin a science mission studying the Martian climate. The critical 27-minute Mars Orbit Insertion maneuver began at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT).

A mission to investigate the atmospheres of planets around other stars has been selected by the European Space Agency for launch in the late 2020s, officials announced this week.

Twenty-eight thousand students across the United States submitted essays and proposed names for NASA’s newest Mars rover and on Thursday, the agency announced the winner: Perseverance, submitted by Virginia seventh-grader Alexander Mather.