NASA Administrator speaks about Orion test flight

Axiom Space, a Houston-based company with plans to develop a commercial outpost in space, announced Thursday it has signed a contract with SpaceX to ferry a professional astronaut and three paying passengers to the International Space Station as soon as next year on the first fully private human spaceflight mission to Earth orbit.

Juno left the Earth atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on Aug. 5, 2011, beginning its journey to Jupiter atop the most powerful Atlas variant with five side-mounted boosters. It arrives at the gas giant on Monday.

In a mission marking the end of an era, NASA astronaut and former virus hunter Kate Rubins, using NASA’s last currently contracted seat on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, rocketed into orbit Wednesday with two cosmonaut crewmates on a record-setting flight to the International Space Station.