Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab teams are gearing up for their first missions of the year in the coming days, with Virgin’s air-launched rocket set for its second demonstration flight and Rocket Lab’s Electron booster poised to launch a small German-owned communications satellite.

New Horizons Mission Operations Manager (MOM) Alice Bowman describes how New Horizons will turn to Earth and ‘phone home’ to confirm if the flyby of Ultima Thule was a success.

The top secret intelligence-gathering payload for the U.S. government set for launch Tuesday on top of a Delta 4-Heavy rocket is likely the next in a line of sensitive eavesdropping satellites designed to intercept radio signals and other communications traffic from adversaries around the world.