July 26, 1971: 45th anniversary of Apollo 15

China’s heaviest rocket has rolled to its launch pad for liftoff Thursday with the country’s first Mars landing mission, an ambitious attempt to place an orbiter around the Red Planet and a robotic rover on the Martian surface in early 2021.

South Korea’s Anasis 2 military communications satellite, built in Europe by Airbus, lifted off Monday from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Launch occurred at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2130 GMT).

Russia launched a fresh satellite for the Glonass network Wednesday aboard a Soyuz rocket, replenishing a fleet of positioning and timing stations used around the world for navigation services.