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

The most powerful version of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT) today on a three-hour flight to deploy a U.S. Navy mobile communications satellite into orbit. Follow the mission in our live journal.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft moved within about 131 feet, or 40 meters, of asteroid Bennu this week in the $1 billion mission’s final practice run before a touch-and-go landing on the asteroid in October to collect samples for return to Earth.

Launching a highly sophisticated infrared surveillance satellite for the U.S. military, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket thunders away from Cape Canaveral.