4K video: Wide-angle view of Falcon 9 hotfire

On its second flight, SpaceX’s mammoth Falcon Heavy rocket hurled an Arabsat communications satellite the size of a school bus nearly one-quarter the way to the moon Thursday, days after NASA’s administrator identified the privately-developed rocket as a backup to the agency’s behind-schedule Space Launch System for sending astronauts back to the lunar surface.

NASA has released new target dates for test flights of commercial crew capsules in development by SpaceX and Boeing, with unpiloted demo missions by SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spaceships now scheduled for January and March, followed by crewed orbital missions in mid-2019.

An airspace restriction over West Texas posted on the Federal Aviation Administration’s website and filed by Blue Origin suggests the company founded by Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos could launch its upgraded reusable New Shepard suborbital booster for the first time this week.