Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

Russian rocket technicians fueled a decommissioned ballistic missile with propellants Monday, a day ahead of the launch of a European satellite primed to observe the planet’s oceans.

Europe’s ExoMars orbiter, due to begin a seven-month journey to the red planet March 14, has met its Russian Proton rocket booster as launch preparations enter the final stages at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ferried a multinational crew into orbit at the break of dawn Friday with a spectacular sky-lighting launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, dazzling early risers along the East Coast with a flawless start to a planned six-month expedition on the International Space Station.