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

NASA’s nuclear-powered Perseverance rover is set to arrive at Mars on Thursday with a make-or-break entry, descent, and landing. The rover will execute the arrival autonomously, while engineers and scientists back on Earth will have a nail-biting 11-minute wait for signals to reach home confirming the fate of the $2.7 billion mission.

The orbital launch year is about to kick off in Florida in the same way it ended 2023: with the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. On board the workhorse launch vehicle is a communications satellite for Sweden-based Ovzon. Liftoff of the rocket is set at the opening of a ten-minute launch window that begins at 6:04 p.m. EST (2304 UTC). It will mark the second Falcon 9 flight in less than 24 hours, following the launch of 21 Starlink satellites from California late Tuesday.

Outgoing space station commander Shane Kimbrough and two Russian crewmates returned to Earth on Monday, riding a Soyuz capsule in a bubble of hot plasma to a parachute-assisted landing in Kazakhstan. The trio undocked from the space station at 0757 GMT (3:57 a.m. EDT) and landed on the Kazakh steppe at 1120 GMT (7:20 a.m. EDT) Monday.