Q&A with Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA

Working under the cloud of the global coronavirus pandemic, technicians and engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center have installed a rotor-driven drone on the agency’s next Mars rover and fueled the spacecraft’s “sky crane” landing system in preparation for launch in July.

The scientist in charge of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission hopes to apply more than $30 million in leftover funding toward reducing the risk of the probe’s touch-and-go maneuver to snag a piece of asteroid Bennu, then eventually hire more experts to analyze the primordial specimens when they return to Earth in 2023.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket fitted with five powerful solid-fueled boosters has lifted off from a seaside launch complex at Cape Canaveral with the U.S. Navy’s third Mobile User Objective System communications satellite.