Q&A with Guido Levrini, ESA’s manager of the Copernicus space segment

Officials expect to delay next year’s launch of a European Mars orbiter and lander about two months — from January to March — to remove faulty pressure transducers from the landing craft’s braking system, the European Space Agency announced Friday.

China launched the fourth in a series of high-resolution Earth-imaging satellites Saturday, expanding an orbiting fleet of reconnaissance craft that likely serve the Chinese military.

Keeping up a tradition dating back to the dawn of the Space Age, a Russian Soyuz rocket emerged from a hangar at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan before sunrise Saturday for rollout to Launch Pad No. 1 at the Central Asia space base, moving into position for liftoff Monday with a U.S.-Russian-Canadian crew heading for the International Space Station.