Watch the Parker Solar Probe pre-launch mission briefing

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.

Mars rovers go through seven minutes of terror when they plunge into the Martian atmosphere at hypersonic speed. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will take a more glacial approach to its asteroid target Tuesday, and the event will be more akin to four-and-a-half hours of mild anxiety for ground teams, according to the mission’s operations manager.

Already shrouded in the Atlas 5 rocket’s Extra Extended Payload Fairing (XEPF) aluminum nose cone, the National Reconnaissance Office’s NROL-61 satellite was delivered to Cape Canaveral’s Vertical Integration Facility on Tuesday, July 19 and lifted aboard the United Launch Alliance vehicle for flight.