Q&A with Rolf de Groot, head of ESA’s robotic exploration office

Follow the major events of the Atlas 5 rocket’s launch with the Solar Orbiter spacecraft with this mission timeline.

Andrew Driesman is project manager for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, leading a team of engineers and operators in charge of the first mission to fly through the sun’s atmosphere.

A Russian-built Soyuz rocket moved to its launch pad on the northeastern coast of South America on Tuesday ahead of a Friday night flight with a Spanish-owned communications satellite to relay video and broadband signals between the Americas and Europe.