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

The operation comes a week after NASA conducted a so-called ‘confidence test’ on Feb. 12, which was the process of loading some liquid hydrogen on the rocket’s core stage.

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley completed their final training sessions in Houston this week before their scheduled May 27 liftoff on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center, the first launch of humans from the Florida spaceport since 2011.

SpaceX teams across the United States are readying for what the company’s chief operating officer predicts will be a record number of launches in 2020. Before the end of January, SpaceX aims to perform four Falcon 9 launches from Florida’s Space Coast — three for the company’s Starlink broadband network, and a crucial in-flight abort test for the Crew Dragon spacecraft no earlier than Jan. 11.