Jason 3 Mission Science Briefing

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk announced Monday plans to send two paying “private individuals” on a week-long flight around the moon and back to Earth by the end of next year.

Performing a successful spacelift mission for the U.S. spy satellite agency, an Atlas 5 rocket delivered a surveillance package into orbit today believed by analysts to be another pair of tandem sleuths to scoop up radio signals from adversarial ships at sea.

Launching for the first time in four-and-a-half months, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Saturday morning with 10 satellites for Iridium’s space-based message relay network.