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

The Russian Soyuz rocket that will carry a three-person crew to the International Space Station Wednesday has arrived on its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

NASA simulated an in-flight launch abort of an Orion crew capsule high above Cape Canaveral on Tuesday, in a major test of the safety system that would whisk astronauts on future moon missions away from a failing rocket.

SpaceX’s upgraded Dragon capsules will not return astronauts to Earth for powered landings as originally envisioned, company boss Elon Musk said Wednesday, a design change that raises questions about the space transport firm’s plans to send commercial landers to the surface of Mars.