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

A Russian-built Soyuz booster lifted off Friday from the European-run spaceport in French Guiana, carrying four new broadband Internet satellites to orbit to join the O3b network owned by SES. Launch occurred at 1710:06 GMT (12:10:06 p.m. EST).

The first well-resolved image of the faraway chunk of rock fleetingly visited by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on New Year’s Day reveals the object — officially named 2014 MU69 but nicknamed Ultima Thule — is made of two lobes scientists say came together in an ancient slow-speed collision just as the solar system’s planets were forming.

Watch a video replay of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe lifting off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 37 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy on August 12, 2018.