Q&A with Jamie Bock, principal investigator of NASA’s SPHEREx mission (members only)

The first picture of NASA’s Perseverance rover landing on Mars shows the nuclear-powered robot suspended under its rocket jetpack just before touchdown. The spectacular view could be upstaged next week with the release of a first-of-its-kind high-definition video replay of the rover’s final descent.

A flying drone fitted with counter-rotating blades, on-board autonomy, and a lightweight carbon-fiber fuselage will ride to the Red Planet with NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, officials announced Friday.

SpaceX readied a Falcon 9 rocket for takeoff Monday to launch a planet-hunting satellite for NASA that will monitor the light from countless stars to find potentially habitable planets worthy of follow-up studies by more powerful ground- and space-based observatories.