Q&A with Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator on NASA’s Dawn mission

A powerful European Ariane 5 rocket blasted off from French Guiana late Friday and boosted a pair of satellites into space for a seven-year plunge into the inner solar system, a voyage requiring seven planetary flybys to slow down enough in the sun’s gravitational clutches to slip into orbit around hellish Mercury.

Using precise autonomous navigation algorithms, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will descend to the surface of an asteroid next year, aiming to retrieve rock specimens for return to Earth from a gravelly pit flanked by hazardous boulders, scientists said Thursday.

These photos were taken on Wednesday, Dec. 2, approximately 24 hours before the scheduled liftoff of the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 with Orbital ATK’s commercial Cygnus cargo ship bound for the International Space Station.