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

Europe’s nearly $8 billion Galileo navigation system, an analog to the U.S. GPS satellite network, is hitting a stride in production and launches, with another two spacecraft encapsulated Wednesday inside the fairing of a Soyuz rocket for liftoff next week.

Launching with two communications satellites to broadcast television to Brazilian homes and connect the islands of Indonesia, an Ariane 5 rocket blasted off from a space base at the northern edge of the Amazon jungle Tuesday, the first of seven planned flights by the European-built booster this year.

SpaceX’s Elon Musk spoke with reporters Monday about his company’s plan to launch two space tourists on a loop around the moon in 2018.