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

A Soyuz rocket soared into orbit after firing off a launch pad in the Amazon jungle Friday, deploying two satellites nearly 15,000 miles above Earth to expand Europe’s Galileo system helping locate automobiles, airliners, and millions of other users around the world.

South Korea’s Anasis 2 military communications satellite, built in Europe by Airbus, lifted off Monday from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Launch occurred at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2130 GMT).

Michel Denis, flight director for Europe’s ExoMars mission, spoke with Spaceflight Now on March 22 about the status of the spacecraft a week after its blastoff from Kazakhstan en route to the red planet.