Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

An experimental receiver aboard a European satellite has picked up signals from more than 15,000 aircraft in the last two years, paving the way for future missions that could track global commercial air traffic from space.

China’s space agency released the first pictures from the Zhurong Mars rover rover Wednesday, showing the six-wheel robot ready to drive down a ramp from its landing platform to begin exploring the Red Planet.

A Russian satellite launched Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, riding a Proton booster and Block DM upper stage toward a position in geostationary orbit to provide weather observations over Siberia, other parts of Russia’s Far East, and the Asia-Pacific region.