Q&A with Mark Sirangelo, leader of Sierra Nevada Space Systems

Eight miniature weather observatories, each the size of a piece of carry-on luggage, were installed on a specially-designed deployer module and mounted on the front end of an air-launched Pegasus XL rocket to prepare for Monday’s flight into orbit.

A break in thunderstorms streaming across Central Florida allowed a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo capsule to blast off Thursday from Cape Canaveral in pursuit of the International Space Station with a new docking mechanism, a spacesuit and 40 mice acting as high-flying research specimens.

Russian launch crews stood up a Soyuz rocket Sunday on its launch mount in Kazakhstan for a scheduled liftoff Wednesday with approximately 5,500 pounds of supplies, experiments, fuel and several small satellites to be released by spacewalking cosmonauts at the International Space Station later this year.