Q&A with Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO

The head of the Russian space agency said this week that the the Gateway mini-space station NASA plans to build around the moon is “too U.S.-centric” and added that Russia unlikely to significantly contribute to the project.

A Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off at 0541 GMT (1:41 a.m. EDT) Thursday from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East, carrying a new Russian weather satellite and 32 secondary payloads into polar orbit.

Europe’s first mission to Mercury, a quartet of Galileo navigation spacecraft, the world’s first global winds observatory, and a new European weather satellite have arrived at an equatorial launch base in French Guiana in preparation for launches in the coming months.