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

The demands of launching the first in an upgraded line of U.S. Air Force GPS navigation satellites, including a late load of extra fuel for the spacecraft and a military policy of reserving fuel to eliminate space junk, will keep SpaceX from recovering the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket following liftoff Thursday from Cape Canaveral, according to mission managers.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sped by the moon Titan on Saturday, using the hazy world’s gravity to slingshot the probe on a trailblazing trajectory to explore the region between Saturn’s hydrogen-helium atmosphere and the planet’s famous rings for the first time.

Jamie Bock, a professor of physics at Caltech, is principal investigator of the SPHEREx astrophysics mission selected by NASA on Feb. 13 as the next medium-class mission in the agency’s line of Explorer probes.