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

Fresh images from NASA’s Juno spacecraft show an ethereal shadow cast by Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io on the planet’s swirling cloud tops.

Just before settling to a soft crash landing Friday, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft captured close-range images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, peering into a stadium-sized pit and recording a final dataset to keep scientists busy long after the mission’s end.

The nuclear power generator for NASA’s Perseverance rover has been installed on the spacecraft atop an Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral, and mission managers gave a green light Wednesday to continue preparations for the rover’s July 30 launch toward Mars.