Q&A with Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator on NASA’s InSight mission (members only)

Two million pounds of firepower successfully launched a behemoth Delta 4-Heavy rocket and a top-secret eavesdropping surveillance satellite into space Saturday, embarking on a taxing climb directly into geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the Earth to deploy one of the pinnacles of U.S. intelligence-gathering.

SpaceX fired up a Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral Wednesday in a pre-flight test for a Starlink satellite launch Sunday, moving closer to the company’s final mission before sending two NASA astronauts into orbit for the first time May 27.

All systems are now “go” for launch of the Air Force’s X-37B mystery spaceplane on May 20 from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas 5 rocket.