Q&A with Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator on NASA’s InSight mission (members only)

Scientists planning the the next phase of NASA’s New Horizons mission, a robotic craft that completed the first exploration of Pluto in 2015, are going into the flyby of a frozen, faraway city-sized clump of rock on New Year’s Day 2019 armed with little knowledge of the target lurking around 4 billion miles from Earth.

An Atlas 5 rocket lifts off from launch complex 41 at Cape Canaveral carrying the SBIRS GEO-4 missile early warning satellite in this video shot from the Kennedy Space Center Press Site.

Three days after launching from Cape Canaveral, SpaceX’s Dragon cargo craft has arrived at the International Space Station with around 5,600 pounds of supplies and experiments. The automated, unpiloted supply ship was snared by the station’s robotic arm at 7:21 a.m. EST (1221 GMT) Saturday.