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

Boeing Co. and SpaceX, selected by NASA last month to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, can resume development of their human-rated spacecraft after officials ordered a work stoppage prompted by a protest by Sierra Nevada Corp., the company left out of the contracts.

SpaceX conducted the first hold-down firing of an upgraded version of the Falcon 9 rocket Friday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, in preparation for launch next week with Bangladesh’s first communications satellite.

Mission controllers plan to unlock the blades on NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter and spin them up to more than 2,000 rpm for a test later this week, a bit of “calisthenics”  before the rotorcraft’s first flight in the atmosphere of Mars as soon as this weekend, the helicopter’s operations lead said Monday.