Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

Dan Hart leads a staff of hundreds of engineers and technicians developing LauncherOne, a commercial air-launched booster intended to hurl small satellites weighing up to 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) into orbit.

In another first on Mars, an instrument inside NASA’s Perseverance rover has made oxygen out of carbon dioxide sucked in from the planet’s atmosphere, officials said Wednesday. The technology could help future astronauts “live off the land” by generating their own rocket fuel and breathing air.

A Proton booster rocketed away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazaskhtan Wednesday with a Eutelsat television broadcasting craft and the satellite industry’s first commercial in-space servicing vehicle. The successful launch marked the first commercial Proton mission under the auspices of International Launch Services in more than two years.