Q&A with Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator on NASA’s Dawn mission

Disconnected from the International Space Station berthing port and then cast free by the robotic arm, the commercial Cygnus cargo craft flew away Friday after successfully restarting U.S. resupply service to the outpost.

Engineers have started testing a new way to use the Curiosity rover’s drill to bore into Martian rocks after a motor in the device stalled late last year, but ground teams are still months away from the first chance to resume drilling operations.

The first images beamed back to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft after it briefly landed an asteroid buoyed expectations Wednesday that the probe collected enough samples to meet the mission’s minimum requirement for return to Earth.