Photos: Soyuz MS-02 spaceship lands in Kazakhstan

NASA is taking steps to rein in costs, emphasizing bonds with private sector companies, and signaling it might be open to a future where the agency’s flagship Orion deep space capsule and Space Launch System are no longer necessary to explore deep space, at least in their current forms.

Keith Gendreau, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, recently spoke with Spaceflight Now about a new experiment on the International Space Station to demonstrate X-ray communications in space for the first time.

A Russian Progress supply ship launched Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, firing into orbit from a snow-covered pad to haul three tons of fuel, water and equipment to the International Space Station.