Video: Time lapse of ATV’s final departure from ISS

Kurt Eberly, who helps lead the Antares rocket program at Orbital ATK, recently spoke with Spaceflight Now about the launcher’s return-to-flight with newly-built engines later this year.

A Russian rocket released two Galileo navigation satellites nearly 15,000 miles above Earth early Friday, adding to a growing fleet giving Europe an independent space-based positioning system tracking automobiles, airplanes and cell phone-carrying people around the world.

Bill Shepherd, a former Navy SEAL-turned astronaut who arrived at the International Space Station 20 years ago Monday to begin the continuous occupancy of the orbiting research outpost, says the experience gained by NASA and its global partners over the last two decades provides a blueprint for missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond.