Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

Inverted cables on the Vega rocket’s upper stage control system apparently caused the launcher to tumble minutes after liftoff Monday night, a failure that resulted in the loss of a Spanish Earth observation satellite and a French research probe, Arianespace officials said Tuesday.

Ground crews at the Guiana Space Center in South America have spent the last few months preparing the BepiColombo spacecraft, a tandem mission with European and Japanese science orbiters bound for Mercury, for launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.

On the eve of launching its first ViaSat 3 internet satellite on a SpaceX rocket, Viasat says it has moved the launch of an identical spacecraft off of Europe’s long-delayed Ariane 6 rocket, and is considering bids from other rocket companies.