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

China has performed a hover and hazard avoidance test on a model the country’s first Mars rover, while engineers ready the real spacecraft for launch toward the red planet in mid-2020.

A capsule carrying extraterrestrial specimens collected by Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is scheduled for landing in South Australia on Dec. 6 to wrap up a six-year round-trip mission to an asteroid, officials announced this week.

Orbital ATK has ordered another Atlas 5 rocket to launch a second commercial Cygnus cargo craft for the International Space Station.