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

July is a month of rich rewards for Alan Stern, the scientist who shepherded the New Horizons spacecraft from the drawing board to Pluto, and the payoff will be sweet.

Arianespace chief executive Stéphane Israël discussed his company’s outlook with Spaceflight Now, touching on the light-class Vega rocket’s business prospects, the launch manifest in 2016, Arianespace’s view of innovation in the launch market, and his plans to compete in the next decade.

New images from Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft show the location of a fresh crater carved from the jagged terrain of asteroid Ryugu by an explosive charge dropped on the tiny world’s rocky surface earlier this month.