Q&A with George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic

NASA says it is interested in flying astronauts and scientists on commercial suborbital vehicles, like those being tested by Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, to provide additional training and research opportunities augmenting missions to the orbiting International Space Station.

These images captured by photographer Gene Blevins show Virgin Galactic’s second SpaceShipTwo space plane making its first rocket-powered test flight Thursday over California’s Mojave Desert, then gliding back to a runway landing.

Jamie Bock, a professor of physics at Caltech, is principal investigator of the SPHEREx astrophysics mission selected by NASA on Feb. 13 as the next medium-class mission in the agency’s line of Explorer probes.