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

Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft dropped an explosive charge on asteroid Ryugu on Thursday night in an audacious attempt to carve a crater on the object, exposing pristine underground rocks to be retrieved by the probe for return to Earth.

Two companies — U.S. aerospace giant Lockheed Martin and British start-up Orbex — seeking to carve out a share of the burgeoning small satellite launch market plan to fly their rockets from a remote site on the northern shore of Scotland, British government and industry officials announced Monday.

A new-generation weather satellite launched in November promising to deliver better images of hurricanes, storms and clouds than any mission before has returned its first tantalizing pictures from geostationary orbit.