Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

A Soyuz booster set for liftoff Wednesday with a Russian cosmonaut, a German flight engineer, and a former NASA flight surgeon heading for the International Space Station arrived at its launch pad in Kazakhstan Monday.

The European Space Agency’s $550 million Aeolus science mission, the product of a drawn-out 16-year development effort that required engineers to master new technologies, is in the starting blocks on a launch pad in French Guiana awaiting liftoff Wednesday to monitor wind speeds from space for the first time on a global scale.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying NASA’s InSight lander toward Mars will have a roughly two-hour predawn launch window each day from May 5 through June 8 to boost the science probe into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.