Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

This is the pre-launch news conference for NASA’s CYGNSS hurricane research mission featuring a constellation of eight microsats launching Dec. 12 aboard an Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket off the Florida coast.

Four satellites set to join O3b’s expanding broadband network successfully launched Friday on top of a Russian-built Soyuz booster from French Guiana, joining 12 other craft linking developing nations, far-flung islands, cruise ships and other hard-to-reach locales with the Internet.

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.