Q&A with John Elbon, VP and general manager of Boeing’s space exploration division

A model of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, in development to loft astronaut crews into deep space, was dropped from a U.S. Air Force cargo plane over Arizona on Wednesday in the latest in a series of tests to verify the capsule’s parachutes are up to the job of safely landing with humans on-board.

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral at 1:51 p.m. EDT (1751 GMT) today to haul a classified satellite into space for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. Follow the mission in our live journal.

Space station commander Jeff Williams and flight engineer Kate Rubins completed a smooth 6-hour 48-minute spacewalk Thursday, retracting a spare cooling radiator, installing two high-definition TV cameras and inspecting a massive solar array rotation mechanism that has experience subtle vibrations in recent months.