Video: Delta 2/SMAP pre-launch news conference

Watch the Atlas 5 rocket and OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return spacecraft pre-launch news conference and the mission science briefing held on Launch-minus 2 days at the Kennedy Space Center.

America’s next Mars rover, a $2.1 billion nuclear-powered vehicle to search for evidence that life once existed there, will be launched to the Red Planet in the summer of 2020 by a powerful Atlas 5 rocket.

With the performance hit on the Atlas 5 rocket’s most recent flight last month now isolated to a faulty valve, preparations to resume the manifest are underway as United Launch Alliance workers stack the next booster for blastoff this summer.