Q&A with Mike Hawes, Lockheed Martin’s Orion program manager

The four RS-25 engines at the bottom of NASA’s first Space Launch System core stage shut down about a minute into a ground test-firing Saturday that was supposed to last more than eight minutes.

Construction crews at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are making steady progress outfitting the Space Launch System’s mobile platform with umbilical connections and access arms, and the walkway for astronauts to board the rocket is the most recent arrival at the Florida spaceport.

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and two cosmonauts blasted off from Kazakhstan Friday and docked with the International Space Station after a two-orbit chase, the first step in a record crew rotation requiring two launches and two landings with four different spacecraft in just three weeks.