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

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 infrared reconnaissance satellite for one of the United States’ highest priority space programs — making early detection of enemy missile launches — was successfully delivered into orbit Friday by an Atlas 5 rocket.

The solar wind, the million-mile-per-hour stream of charged particles blasted away from the sun, is slowly but surely stripping away Mars’ atmosphere and likely played a major role in turning the red planet from a habitable world in the distant past into the dry, frozen wasteland seen today, scientists said Thursday.