Q&A with Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO

The grapple mechanism installed on one end of the space station’s robot arm during a spacewalk Tuesday is experiencing problems. It will be removed during a re-planned spacewalk Monday and the original fitting will be re-installed, NASA said Friday.

With an eye on dangerous Hurricane Irma’s forecast path toward Florida, SpaceX and the U.S. Air Force are proceeding with preparations to launch an unpiloted reusable military spaceship Thursday on a mission to conduct experiments in orbit, deploy multiple small satellites and glide back to Earth for a runway landing after months or years in space.

This was the third launch of a GPS satellite in as many years. Liftoff of the GPS 3-9 mission from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station launched at 11:53:16 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Jan. 27 (0453:16 UTC on Jan. 28).