Q&A with Scott Bolton, principal investigator on NASA’s Juno mission

Three robotic Mars missions launched from Earth last month have begun fine-tuning their trajectories through the solar system with the first in a series mid-course corrections to take aim on the Red Planet for arrival next February.

NASA announced Thursday nine companies that will be eligible to compete for up to $2.6 billion in contracts over the next decade to ferry scientific instruments and tech demo payloads to the moon aboard commercial robotic landers, a first step in what agency officials said will foster expanded private investment in deep space exploration and an eventual return of humans to the lunar surface.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft sailed over Jupiter’s cloud tops early Monday, the fourth time the solar-powered probe has approached the giant planet and collected science data since its arrival last July 4.