Mission Reports

The zoomable camera on NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars recently captured a dramatic view of Phobos, the largest of the Red Planet’s two potato-shaped moons, crossing the face of the sun in a solar eclipse lasting a little more than 40 seconds.

Rocket Lab used a helicopter to capture a spent Electron first stage booster and its parachute after launching satellites from New Zealand Monday, a significant step forward for the company’s rocket recovery and reuse program. The helicopter dropped the rocket a few seconds later.

Two Chinese rockets, including one launched from an ocean-going platform in the East China Sea, deployed seven optical Earth-imaging satellites in a pair of successful missions last week.

Russia fired a rocket into orbit Friday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the first use of an Angara launcher for a satellite mission, 30 years after starting work on the program just after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Rocket Lab tried to catch an Electron booster with a helicopter Monday off the coast of New Zealand, following a launch at 6:49 p.m. EDT (2249 GMT) with 34 small commercial satellites. The mission marked the the first time Rocket Lab attempted to recover a booster in mid-air after launch, continuing the company’s rocket reuse initiative.