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

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Friday, heading due east over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver the Bangabandhu 1 communications satellite into orbit around 33 minutes later.

Less than a week after winding up a successful spacewalk, outgoing space station commander Jeff Williams, America’s most experienced astronaut, will join two Russian cosmonauts for a fiery descent to Earth Tuesday evening to close out a 172-day mission covering 2,752 orbits and 72.8 million miles since launch last March.

A secret Chinese military payload, believed to be a surveillance satellite, successfully flew into space Sunday aboard a Long March 4C rocket on China’s 39th and final scheduled orbital launch attempt of the year.