Q&A with Jamie Bock, principal investigator of NASA’s SPHEREx mission (members only)

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket rolled out to its launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on Monday, one day before its scheduled liftoff carrying seven satellites into orbit on commercial communications and climate research missions.

A high-resolution camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted the Perseverance rover after landing on the Red Planet last month, showing the nuclear-powered robot sitting on the Martian surface with its supersonic parachute and other landing system components scattered nearby.

Working under the cloud of the global coronavirus pandemic, technicians and engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center have installed a rotor-driven drone on the agency’s next Mars rover and fueled the spacecraft’s “sky crane” landing system in preparation for launch in July.