Video: Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager, previews Ultima Thule flyby (members only)

SpaceX is set to retire its current fleet of Dragon capsules, in use since 2010, next year and begin flying supplies to the International Space Station on a new variant of the Dragon spacecraft based on the model in development to carry astronauts.

In the final days of a three-and-a-half year pursuit, Japan’s Hayabusa 2 sample return spacecraft is beaming back clearer images of asteroid Ryugu, an unexplored object that scientists say resembles a spinning top or dumpling nearly 180 million miles from Earth.

Officials hailed an action-packed three-minute test flight Tuesday over Cape Canaveral that exercised the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort rocket, a key safety system on the capsule NASA is developing to carry astronauts back to the moon.