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

The Falcon 9 rocket flew in a south-easterly trajectory once its lifts off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The mission launched at 6:15 p.m. PDT (9:15 p.m. EDT, 0115 UTC).

Technicians inched the two halves of the Atlas 5’s aluminum nose cone around NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to package the asteroid sample return probe, then moved the satellite to the rocket’s assembly building and hoisted it aboard the two-stage booster during the final days of August for the Sept. 8 launch.

Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule accomplished an early at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 7:58 a.m. EST (5:58 a.m. MST; 1258 GMT) Sunday to conclude an abbreviated two-day unpiloted test flight after a timing error on the spacecraft shortly after launch prevented it from linking up with the International Space Station as planned.