Q&A with Josef Aschbacher, director of ESA’s Earth observation programs (members only)

An Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle lifted off at 0427 GMT Thursday (11:27 p.m. EST Wednesday) with 31 satellites from nine countries, with most of the smallsats coming from U.S. customers.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket climbed into space Monday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center atop a column of gleaming exhaust, shooting a commercial resupply vessel toward the International Space Station with research projects looking into cosmic rays, the origin of Parkinson’s disease, the utility of small satellites and an experimental radiation-tolerant supercomputer.

A powerhouse communications satellite owned by Inmarsat has been fueled for liftoff on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Monday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a mission to provide broadband links for passengers and crews aboard ships and airplanes, while technicians are loading space station-bound supplies into a commercial Dragon cargo capsule and preparing a Bulgarian telecom for launch on two other SpaceX boosters by mid-June.