John Grunsfeld speaks about Orion’s science goals

After assessing any damage to the spaceport caused by Hurricane Dorian as it narrowly missed Florida’s east coast, NASA says the Kennedy Space Center will reopen for normal operations Friday. Teams rolled the Space Launch System’s mobile launch platform from pad 39B back into the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building last week for safekeeping during the storm.

The largest solid rocket booster in the world, an extended version of the space shuttle motor, will be test-fired in Utah on Wednesday to check its qualifications to be part of NASA’s new heavy-lift Space Launch System.

The pace of the European Space Agency’s development of a power and propulsion module for NASA’s Orion crew capsule will likely determine when an unpiloted test flight of the spaceship and its heavy-lift rocket will take off, NASA officials said last week.