Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

In a rapid-fire crew rotation, a Russian cosmonaut, a NASA astronaut and an Italian flier plan to close out a 139-day mission aboard the International Space Station with a fiery plunge back to the frigid steppe of Kazakhstan aboard their Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft early Thursday.

A high-power Russian satellite designed to deliver broadband Internet connections and relay television and videoconferencing signals fired into orbit Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, working well past their expected lifetimes, could be shut down in fiscal year 2016 as the agency tries to balance funding for older missions and development of modernized new space probes.