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

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, designed to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, fired into orbit on top of a Falcon 9 rocket Saturday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA has selected Maxar Technologies for a $375 million contract to design, build and launch the core element of a mini-space station in orbit around the moon that will double as a deep space research outpost and a staging point for future human expeditions to the lunar surface.