Video: New Horizons phone home will confirm health of spacecraft

Ground crews at the Guiana Space Center in South America have spent the last few months preparing the BepiColombo spacecraft, a tandem mission with European and Japanese science orbiters bound for Mercury, for launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft bound for a rendezvous with Jupiter in July has set a record as the most distant solar-powered space probe ever flown.

NASA’s last space shuttle commander — former U.S. Navy fighter pilot Chris Ferguson — will fly Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule on its first piloted test mission to the International Space Station next year.