Photos: Predawn launch of Atlas 5

Speaking with Spaceflight Now on the sidelines of the International Astronautical Congress this week, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine offered his assessment on the status of a budget battle to secure funding for the agency’s Artemis program, which seeks to achieve the next human landing on the moon by the end of 2024.

United Launch Alliance is set to retire part of its rocket family Thursday with the final flight of the Delta 4 rocket’s “single stick” configuration, a mission set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral carrying a new GPS navigation satellite into orbit for the U.S. Air Force.

A commercial satellite launched Sunday on a Russian Proton rocket successfully deployed in orbit thousands of miles above Earth to join Inmarsat’s new communications network providing high-speed data links between airplanes, ships and far-flung customers anywhere in the world.