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

The launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Aug. 24 from California delivered Taiwan’s Formosat 5 Earth-imaging satellite to orbit, and the Falcon’s first stage booster returned to landing on a drone ship downrange in the Pacific Ocean.

Closing out a three-day chase from a launch pad in Virginia, Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo freighter arrived Thursday at the International Space Station with nearly 7,400 pounds of equipment, delivering food, a quantum physics experiment, and CubeSats for later deployment in orbit.

SpaceX and United Launch Alliance expect to resume launches with little or no delay after Hurricane Irma veered west of Cape Canaveral last weekend, sparing the launch base from the storm’s most extreme damage.