Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

With three space station fliers safely back on Earth after a pinpoint landing Sunday, three fresh crew members made final preparations for launch Wednesday from Kazakhstan to boost the lab’s crew back to six.

China’s heaviest rocket has rolled to its launch pad for liftoff Thursday with the country’s first Mars landing mission, an ambitious attempt to place an orbiter around the Red Planet and a robotic rover on the Martian surface in early 2021.

NASA’s pioneering Mars helicopter Ingenuity continues to outperform its design specifications, having now notched up more than 50 record-breaking forays across the Red Planet’s surface, 10 times as many flights as originally planned for.