Q&A with Keith Gendreau, principal investigator of the first X-ray space communications experiment (members only)

On course to collect specimens from asteroid Bennu after its launch last year, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will search this month for objects locked in orbits near Earth, a bonus science opportunity to locate possible fragments of the primordial building blocks that formed our home planet.

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday night with the U.S. Air Force’s eighth Wideband Global SATCOM communications satellite, lighting up the sky in these images taken from the nearby Kennedy Space Center press site.

United Launch Alliance is set to try again to launch a Delta 4-Heavy rocket and a classified U.S. government spy satellite Thursday after delays of more than three months caused by persistent issues with the mission’s launch pad.