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

SpaceX launched 60 more spacecraft Wednesday to join the Starlink fleet beaming broadband signals around the world, while the company’s engineers move closer to debuting a sunshade that could reduce the satellites’ impacts on ground-based astronomy.

A team of SpaceX engineers is building a prototype of the spaceship Elon Musk hopes will one day carry people and cargo deep into the solar system, and it could begin low-altitude testing next year, kicking off a multi-step test campaign before eventually going into space, then perhaps the moon or Mars.

A Rockot booster and Breeze upper stage delivered three Russian military communications satellites to orbit Friday after a launch from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome around 500 miles north of Moscow.