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

NASA and Northrop Grumman are expected to base the launch of an air-dropped Pegasus rocket with a NASA science satellite from Cape Canaveral later this year, after originally trying to get the mission into space from a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The 100th flight of America’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program — a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket — departed Cape Canaveral on Saturday evening carrying the most advanced U.S. weather satellite ever made.

Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket will deliver the commercial Cygnus supply ship to an orbit with an altitude between 130 miles and 179 miles within about nine minutes of liftoff from Virginia’s Eastern Shore.