Q&A with Scott Bolton, principal investigator on NASA’s Juno mission

The early months of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission’s exploration of asteroid Bennu have revealed big surprises, scientists said Tuesday, including plumes of particles streaming away from the asteroid, sometimes with enough velocity for rocks to break out of Bennu’s tenuous gravitational grip and escape into space.

Building on a mission canceled last year, NASA is developing a mobile robot named VIPER for launch in 2022 to scout for water ice at the moon’s south pole, the same region where the agency aims to land astronauts by 2024.

An upgraded NOAA weather satellite has entered service after a year of checkouts to provide critical, rapidly-refreshed imagery to forecasters in time for next year’s severe storm and hurricane seasons in the United States and the Atlantic Ocean.