Video: Antares rocket returns to flight with new engines

NASA commander Mike Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover, astronaut Shannon Walker, and Japanese mission specialist Soichi Noguchi wrapped up a 167-day mission early Sunday with a splashdown at sea aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule at around 2:56 a.m. EDT (0656 GMT).

Firefly Aerospace is asking academic institutions, startup companies and the public to submit ideas for payloads to launch, free of charge, on the inaugural orbital flight of the company’s Alpha rocket next year from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

On the eve of the Iridium’s fifth launch with SpaceX, the mobile telecom satellite operator’s chief executive says he no longer waits for SpaceX’s rockets to be ready. Instead, Iridium’s satellite team is racing to keep pace churning spacecraft off their assembly line.