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

DigitalGlobe’s WorldView 4 commercial satellite, which will join sister-craft WorldView 3 in orbit to snap the highest quality Earth imagery available on the market at 31-centimeter resolution, was built by Lockheed Martin and will be launched Friday atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

A layer of fog intruding on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California kept nearby observers from seeing any sign of Saturday’s predawn launch of an Atlas 5 rocket carrying a robotic NASA probe to Mars. The only images of the Atlas 5’s fiery takeoff came from remote cameras placed at the launch pad, or from distant viewing points away from the poor visibility.

Arianespace and CNES, the French space agency, have released sensational slow-motion video from shielded engineering cameras at the Ariane 5 rocket’s launch pad in French Guiana, showing the launcher’s fiery evening takeoff Feb. 5 with communications satellites for Saudi Arabia and India.