Q&A with Alain Charmeau, CEO of Airbus Safran Launchers

A new solid rocket motor built by Northrop Grumman has aced its final test-firing before a scheduled debut on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket flight next year.

An experimental satellite for Canon Electronics and nine Earth-imaging CubeSats for Planet fired into orbit from New Zealand on Wednesday on top of a Rocket Lab Electron booster, taking the place of similar spacecraft destroyed in a Rocket Lab launch failure in July.

A U.S.-built, Bulgarian-owned broadcast satellite will launch in mid-June from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a previously-used SpaceX Falcon 9 booster that first flew in January, officials said Friday.