Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

Andrew Driesman is project manager for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, leading a team of engineers and operators in charge of the first mission to fly through the sun’s atmosphere.

Engineers have started testing a new way to use the Curiosity rover’s drill to bore into Martian rocks after a motor in the device stalled late last year, but ground teams are still months away from the first chance to resume drilling operations.

A European re-entry demonstrator launched aboard a solid-fueled Vega rocket at 1340 GMT (8:40 a.m. EST) from French Guiana, kicking off a whirlwind 102-minute around-the-world test flight to validate technologies that could be used on future reusable launchers and spaceships.