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

In the ten years since its launch from Cape Canaveral, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has orbited the two largest worlds in the asteroid belt and overcome defective components that threatened to derail the mission on its 4 billion-mile voyage, discovering unexpectedly rich geologic tapestries suggesting both destinations have a watery past.

NASA has released an image of Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Tethys caught in a rare alignment by the Cassini spacecraft, which is heading for its final close encounter with the icy moon Enceladus Saturday.

Propelled by five strap-on solid rocket boosters and a Russian-made kerosene-fueled RD-180 main engine, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on March 26 with the U.S. military’s sixth AEHF communications satellite.