Q&A with Matt Desch, CEO of Iridium (members only)

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster accomplished a delicate maneuver after a glowing predawn launch from Cape Canaveral on Saturday, autonomously navigating its away to a modified barge the size of a football field hidden in darkness beneath a blanket of low clouds, before it crashed and broke apart.

Engineers working for Spaceflight, a Seattle-based launch services company, are in the final steps of preparing for the first launch of new robotic free flyers carrying more than 70 small government and commercial satellites into polar orbit later this year aboard a dedicated flight of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

NASA’s small Lunar Flashlight spacecraft, sent to the moon last year to search for water ice deposits at the lunar south pole, will not be able to complete its science mission after a problem with the probe’s propulsion system.