Q&A with Heino Falcke, principal investigator of the Netherlands-China Low-Frequency Explorer (members only)

A land imaging satellite soared to a 300-mile-high perch above Earth Saturday after lifting off on top of a Long March 2D rocket from the Jiuquan space base in the Gobi Desert, joining a similar military reconnaissance craft launched earlier this month in the same type of orbit.

As soon as next year, NASA plans to launch a CubeSat the size of a microwave oven into a unique elliptical orbit around the moon as a scout for the future lunar Gateway, a mini-space station NASA intends to use as a staging point for crewed lunar landings beginning as soon as 2024.

India’s Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft braked into orbit around the moon Tuesday, positioning the robotic science mission for a landing in the moon’s south pole region Sept. 6.