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

In the final hours of a 340-day mission, Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko said goodbye to their crewmates and closed the hatch to the International Space Station on Tuesday, heading for a parachute-assisted touchdown in Kazakhstan a few hours later.

United Launch Alliance encapsulated the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R, GOES-R, on Oct. 21 at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida.

The Starlink 12-8 mission was SpaceX’s 20 orbital launch of the year and send 21 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit. Liftoff happened at 1:14 a.m. EST (0614 UTC).