NASA, United Launch Alliance and Air Force officials hold the pre-launch news conference for the Delta 2 rocket with the agency’s SMAP environmental satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Jan. 27.

Shielded from view within the protective rocket nose cone, a covert surveillance satellite has been mounted atop a Delta 4-Heavy rocket for launch June 4.

Speeding toward Jupiter at nearly 40 miles per second, NASA’s Juno spacecraft must brave a field of computer-zapping radiation and Jupiter’s tenuous ring of ice and dust particles when it brakes into orbit around the giant planet Monday.