Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

Europe’s nearly $8 billion Galileo navigation system, an analog to the U.S. GPS satellite network, is hitting a stride in production and launches, with another two spacecraft encapsulated Wednesday inside the fairing of a Soyuz rocket for liftoff next week.

A rover NASA plans to launch to Mars in 2020 will likely explore one of three locations selected last week by a scientific advisory group, which picked candidate landing sites that were once homes to ancient lakes and hot springs.

NASA is taking steps to rein in costs, emphasizing bonds with private sector companies, and signaling it might be open to a future where the agency’s flagship Orion deep space capsule and Space Launch System are no longer necessary to explore deep space, at least in their current forms.