Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

Data collected by NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft in its first two years at Mars confirm suspicions that the solar wind is blasting away the planet’s atmosphere and helped transform the world from a warmer, wetter and potentially habitable world into the barren landscape seen today, scientists said.

The launch of a Japanese X-ray telescope and robotic lunar lander has been delayed to no earlier than August, and the launch schedule for another Japanese mission to return samples from a moon of Mars is in doubt as engineers investigate the failure of Japan’s first H3 rocket last month.

Carefully analyzing data collected by NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover, scientists discovered a sudden, unexpected spike in methane levels in the martian atmosphere over a two-month period one year ago.