Watch a video replay of NASA’s exoplanet announcement

JPL chief engineer Rob Manning, a veteran of Mars mission teams dating back to Mars Pathfinder more than two decades ago, describes how the InSight spacecraft will enter the Martian atmosphere and touch down on the red planet.

Fresh off its first terrestrial test drive, NASA’s Mars 2020 rover was displayed to media last week at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California before it’s packed up and flown across the country to Cape Canaveral in February to begin final launch preparations for liftoff in July.

NASA managers formally approved the New Horizons mission another speedy encounter with an object at the frontier of the solar system, but denied a request from scientists to redirect the Dawn spacecraft to visit a third destination in the asteroid belt, opting to keep it in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, officials said Friday.