Q&A with Kurt Eberly, Orbital ATK’s Antares deputy program manager

Orbital ATK launch managers have pushed back liftoff of an Antares rocket until Monday to replace a faulty cable on the booster’s launch pad in Virginia.

Anton Zeilinger first proposed the idea for a satellite-based quantum communications experiment to the European Space Agency in 2001, but officials did not forward with the idea. A decade-and-a-half later, the world-renowned physicist’s former student leads a Chinese project aimed at proving quantum teleportation and ultra-secure data links at global scale for the first time.

Looping back near Earth for the first time since its launch one week ago, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite fired its thrusters early Wednesday to begin boosting its orbit toward the moon for a May 17 gravity assist maneuver that will help catapult the probe into its unique science orbit.