Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, French-born European Space Agency flight engineer Thomas Pesquet and veteran NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson put on their Sokol spacesuits, boarded their Soyuz capsule and blasted into orbit Thursday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Check out photos of their launch day activities.

The European Philae comet lander, out of power and presumably lost after bouncing into heavily shadowed terrain last November, phoned home Saturday after finally getting enough sunlight on its solar panels to transmit data to the Rosetta orbiter for relay to Earth.

India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle released 31 satellites into two different orbits Thursday, and on-board cameras captured dazzling views of the smallsats flying away from the rocket’s upper stage high above Earth.