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

Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is preparing to release three hopping robots to land on asteroid Ryugu in the coming month, with tiny instruments scientists hope will explore the airless world’s boulder-strewn landscape and return the first images from the surface of an asteroid.

Two weeks into its mission of exploration on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover is doing an “exceptional job” and has completed its first test drive, mission managers said Friday.

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter flew farther and faster Sunday than the rotorcraft’s first two test flights in the Martian atmosphere, traveling the length of a football field while exceeding distances and speeds achieved during testing on Earth, officials said.