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

NASA has released the first high-resolution aerial color image of the Opportunity rover’s landing site on a sprawling Martian plain, where the airbag-cushioned robot fortuitously rolled into a Eagle Crater in January 2004, putting its scientific instruments face-to-face with a block of sedimentary rock that gave ground teams confirmation Mars was once a warmer, wetter, and habitable planet.

With U.S. military demand waning in coming years, United Launch Alliance has multiple openings in its Atlas 5 launch manifest in 2017 and 2018 available to commercial customers with as little as three months’ notice, according to company officials.

A heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket propelled China’s first Mars landing mission toward the Red Planet on Thursday after launching from a seaside spaceport on Hainan Island, the second of three international Mars probes expected to depart planet Earth this month.