Photos: News media shots of the NROL-52 liftoff

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.

Russia launched a Soyuz rocket Sunday through a veil of fog over the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying the first spacecraft in a new program to monitor Arctic weather systems and relay emergency communications.

Bill Gerstenmaier, former director of spaceflight at NASA Headquarters and a widely respected aerospace engineer and manager, has taken a consulting position at SpaceX, the California rocket company NASA helped save in 2008 with the award of a $1.6 billion contract to build and launch space station cargo ships.