Q&A with Earl Maize, Cassini project manager (members only)

Seeking to become the fourth nation to successfully land on the moon, India launched an ambitious robotic lunar mission named Chandrayaan 2 on Monday, targeting a touchdown near the lunar south pole Sept. 6.

After three weeks of intense analysis and troubleshooting, European Space Agency flight controllers have finally succeeded in freeing a jammed boom critical to the Jupiter-bound JUICE probe’s ice-penetrating radar instrument.

For the first time in nearly 30 years, the U.S. Department of Energy has produced a sample of plutonium-238, the radioactive isotope used to power deep space missions, good news for future NASA space probes heading to destinations starved of sunlight.