Q&A with Mimi Aung, Mars Helicopter project manager at JPL (members only)

The last bits of data collected during NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft’s speedy flyby of Pluto last year are back on Earth, scientists said Thursday, marking the official end of the probe’s prime mission.

NASA has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket to launch a robotic mission in July 2022 to explore Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The Psyche probe is NASA’s first mission assigned to fly on SpaceX’s heavy-lift launcher.

NASA’s robotic Juno spacecraft wil spend another three years probing the inside of Jupiter, giving the mission more time to meet its primary science objectives after concerns over the health of the probe’s engine prevented it from dropping into a lower, shorter orbit around the solar system’s biggest planet.