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

An unexpected reading from a ground sensor prompted SpaceX to scrub the planned launch of a Falcon 9 rocket Thursday with 60 more Starlink broadband satellites. It was the second last-minute abort of a rocket launch on Florida’s Space Coast in less than 10 hours, following a hold Wednesday night just before engines ignited on a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket.

Sky-watchers with a passion for looking up and tracking satellites with remarkable precision have made quick work of locating the spacecraft launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket on Thursday.

NASA managers face a July 12 deadline to decide whether to send the Dawn spacecraft on an unplanned visit to a third object in the asteroid belt or keep the probe at dwarf planet Ceres until it runs out of fuel next year, officials said this week.