Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

A Russian Proton rocket fired six main engines and soared into space from Kazakhstan on Saturday, deploying a commercial communications satellite owned by SES for a 15-year mission linking Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Launches of interplanetary missions can only depart Earth when the positions of the planets are just right, and officials managing the development of probes set for launch in 2021 and 2022 to explore asteroids and Jupiter says construction milestones and reviews are proceeding to keep the projects on schedule despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Josef Aschbacher, head of ESA’s Earth observation programs, recently spoke with Spaceflight Now about the importance of the Sentinel 5P satellite mission designed for air quality measurements from space, and discussed increasing data usage from Europe’s Copernicus environmental network, and plans to expand the flagship Earth observation fleet.