Q&A with Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator

The next flight of the U.S. military’s reusable X-37B spaceplane — scheduled for liftoff May 16 from Cape Canaveral — will carry more experiments into orbit than any of the winged ship’s previous missions, including two payloads for NASA and a small deployable satellite built by Air Force Academy cadets.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket successfully flies to orbit Friday to deliver the U.S. Navy’s fifth Mobile User Objective System communications satellite.

The world’s highest capacity broadband satellite, a craft that will connect rural America to high-speed Internet service, successfully rocketed into space today aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 booster.