Q&A with Mark Mulqueen, Boeing’s space station program manager

A Falcon 9 rocket is being readied for a space station resupply mission at Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A . The rocket is scheduled to launch at 10:01 a.m. EST (1501 GMT) on Saturday, weather permitting. Watch live coverage.

A senior NASA official said Tuesday that the Space Launch System, a huge heavy-lift rocket years behind schedule, could launch astronauts on a moon landing mission in 2024 on just its third flight to meet a goal announced last month by Vice President Mike Pence, while commercial companies will be entrusted with more responsibility to develop a lunar lander and a modest mini-space station, or Gateway, in lunar orbit.

Rookie astronaut Raja Chari — a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot — veteran physician-astronaut Tom Marshburn, and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer have been assigned to fly to the International Space Station on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship in the fall of 2021.