Q&A with Elon Musk after SpaceX’s first rocket landing

When SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket finally takes off for the first time, a debut now scheduled this fall, there’s a good chance the commercial heavy-lifter will falter short of reaching orbit, company founder and chief designer Elon Musk said last week.

The mission, dubbed NG-20, marks the first of three planned flights of Cygnus aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff occurred at 12:07 p.m. EST (1707 UTC).

An unpiloted space plane developed by Sierra Nevada Corp. will join cargo carriers built by SpaceX and Orbital ATK to resupply the International Space Station beginning in 2019, NASA announced Thursday.