Live coverage: Orion lands in Pacific

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told a Senate panel Wednesday that a budget impasse and subsequent spending freeze later this year would be “devastating” to the agency’s goal of sending the first woman and next man to the moon by the end of 2024.

Rolling toward a mid-May deployment of a clandestine spy satellite, United Launch Alliance’s triple-body Delta 4-Heavy rocket moved from its Cape Canaveral assembly building to pad 37B yesterday.

Outgoing space station commander Shane Kimbrough and two Russian crewmates returned to Earth on Monday, riding a Soyuz capsule in a bubble of hot plasma to a parachute-assisted landing in Kazakhstan. The trio undocked from the space station at 0757 GMT (3:57 a.m. EDT) and landed on the Kazakh steppe at 1120 GMT (7:20 a.m. EDT) Monday.