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

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk tweeted Friday that his red Tesla Roadster will head for deep space on the maiden flight of the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket as soon as next month, and do it to the tune of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

A Russian Proton rocket lifted off Thursday with a U.S.-built communications satellite to broadcast television over Latin America, firing into orbit from the historic Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Russian investigators have traced the cause of a dramatic Oct. 11 Soyuz launch abort to a “deformed” sensor in a system that controlled the separation of a strap-on first-stage booster from the rocket’s central core stage, triggering a dramatic emergency escape for the Russian mission commander and his NASA co-pilot, senior managers said Thursday.