Live coverage: Orion lands in Pacific

Andrew Driesman is project manager for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, leading a team of engineers and operators in charge of the first mission to fly through the sun’s atmosphere.

NASA announced Monday it will order at least six reusable Orion crew capsules from Lockheed Martin for $4.6 billion to fly astronauts to the vicinity of the moon in the 2020s, and the agency said it plans to purchase hardware for up to 12 Orion vehicles by 2030.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket disintegrated shortly after launch from Cape Canaveral on Sunday, dealing a blow to the entrepreneurial space company and NASA’s supply chain to the International Space Station.