Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

The Perseverance rover’s sterilized sample tubes — designed to seal Martian rock and sediment for eventual return to Earth — are installed on the spacecraft as teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center prepare to enclose the rover inside the payload shroud of its Atlas 5 launcher for liftoff July 20.

NOAA’s GOES-S weather satellite, the latest in a series of meteorological observatories dating back to 1975, lifted off Thursday from Cape Canaveral aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.

JPL chief engineer Rob Manning, a veteran of Mars mission teams dating back to Mars Pathfinder more than two decades ago, describes how the InSight spacecraft will enter the Martian atmosphere and touch down on the red planet.