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

NASA’s New Horizons space probe, 10 days from a one-shot encounter with enigmatic Pluto, stopped collecting science data Saturday after a technical problem interrupted the spacecraft’s tightly-choreographed flight plan.

Blue Origin has partnered with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to build elements of the company’s human-rated lunar lander, and Draper will lead development of the lander’s avionics and guidance systems, with an aim to be ready to land a crew on the moon by 2024, company founder Jeff Bezos announced Tuesday.

After a year-long delay to troubleshoot recurring erroneous data signatures from the rudder of Northrop Grumman’s air-launched Pegasus XL rocket, NASA is eager to send a $252 million research satellite into orbit as soon as Thursday night off Florida’s east coast on a mission to probe the ionosphere, a region near the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.