Mission Reports

Japan is set to test its new flagship launch vehicle, the H3, with a demonstration flight Thursday night from the Tanegashima Space Center, debuting a rocket that is less expensive, more capable, and more flexible than the country’s previous generation of launchers.

NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars has cooly notched up another significant first by creating the first ever storage depot on another world for Martian soil samples. But if the rover’s mission goes to plan and it continues to operate as scheduled, the cached samples could be left on the Martian surface forever.

The second test flight of India’s Small Satellite Launch Vehicle was successful Feb. 10, delivering Indian and U.S.-owned payloads into orbit after the new rocket’s first demonstration mission ended in failure last year.