Q&A with Guglielmo Aglietti, RemoveDebris principal investigator (members only)

Unimpeded by rain showers and a dark gray blanket of low clouds, an Ariane 5 rocket thundered away from a European-run space base in the jungle of French Guiana Tuesday to place four Galileo navigation satellites in orbit, an on-target deployment that should improve the location accuracy of new smartphones around the world.

Eight satellites blasted off Monday on top of an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, including an instrument to track tropical cyclones, a pathfinder for a U.S.-owned commercial Earth observation fleet, and multiple spacecraft for Algeria.

Steve Skladanek leads Lockheed Martin’s rocket sales force charged with pushing the Atlas 5 rocket, which has largely been on the sidelines of the commercial launch business in recent years, on the global satellite market.