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

NASA’s Perseverance rover is racing toward Mars for a daring high-speed plunge into the Red Planet’s atmosphere Thursday, ready to use a heat shield, a supersonic parachute, and braking rockets for a pinpoint touchdown on a dried-up river delta that may harbor clues about the potential for past life.

SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy rocket powered off launch pad 39A at 3:45 p.m. EST (2045 GMT) Tuesday on its inaugural test flight, and we captured the launcher’s spectacular liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center’s Press Site around 3 miles from the pad.

SpaceX conducted its first launch from Florida in more than two months Thursday, when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center with the Qatari Es’hail 2 communications satellite at 3:46 p.m. EST (2046 GMT). The Falcon 9’s reused first stage landed on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.