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

SpaceX’s 22-story Falcon 9 rocket stands on Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad Sunday, hours before the scheduled liftoff of a pair of commercial communications satellites for Eutelsat and Asia Broadcast Satellite.

Dragon Freedom undocked from the space station at 1:05 a.m. EDT (1705 UTC) on Tuesday to begin its roughly 17-hour trip to splash down along Florida’s Gulf Coast. The parachute-supported splash down happened at 5:57 p.m. EDT (2157 UTC).

International Space Station astronaut Jeff Williams opened the hatch and floated into the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, experimental habitat today for the first time.