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

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral at 6:28 a.m. EDT (1028 GMT) today to deploy the Mexican Morelos 3 mobile communications satellite.

In the ten years since its launch from Cape Canaveral, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has orbited the two largest worlds in the asteroid belt and overcome defective components that threatened to derail the mission on its 4 billion-mile voyage, discovering unexpectedly rich geologic tapestries suggesting both destinations have a watery past.

Two key pieces of hardware needed for NASA’s next Mars rover — an Atlas rocket booster and sterile components of the rover’s sample collection system — recently arrived at Cape Canaveral ahead of the mission’s scheduled launch July 17.