Q&A with Eric Smith, JWST program director

Northrop Grumman’s second robotic life extension spacecraft docked with an Intelsat satellite in geosynchronous orbit Monday, the first link-up between a commercial servicing mission and an operational communications craft.

Japan’s Hitomi X-ray observatory, beset by an attitude control problem that has disrupted communications since March 29, may have shed one of its power-generating solar panels or deployable telescope in orbit and is spinning too fast to contact ground controllers, officials said.

A twin-engine Northrop Grumman Antares rocket climbed into orbit Saturday from Virginia’s Eastern Shore carrying a Cygnus supply ship bound for the International Space Station with a compact electron microscope, a flame combustion experiment, a range of biological investigations, fresh cheese, fruit and vegetables for the research lab’s three-person crew.