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

SpaceX called off the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday to make sure the booster’s supply of super-chilled cryogenic liquid oxygen is cold enough to support the delivery of the 5.8-ton SES 9 commercial communications satellite to an orbit nearly 25,000 miles above Earth.

There were more successful space launches in 2014 than in any year since 1992, with Russia, the United States and China responsible for more than 80 percent of global launch activity.

The UK government and India’s Bharti Global mobile telecom operator announced Friday they placed the winning bid to purchase OneWeb, which filed for bankruptcy in March while in the early stages of deploying a megaconstellation of broadband satellites.