Watch a 4K video replay of Falcon Heavy’s static fire test (members only)

SpaceX’s next launch of satellites for the company’s Starlink broadband network — planned in the final days of 2019 — will carry one spacecraft with an experimental coating designed to make it less reflective in orbit, a first step in assuaging concerns from scientists who say the deployment of thousands more Starlink stations would impede some astronomical observations.

Astra engineers scrubbed a launch attempt Monday at Kodiak Island, Alaska, to assess troubling data from a guidance, navigation and control sensor on the company’s new small satellite launcher, ending a bid to win up to $12 million in prize money from a U.S. military research agency.

NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory, a $340 million mission that spent more than a decade grounded in a Maryland warehouse, will begin warning forecasters of dangerous solar storms next month, giving notice of events that could disrupt air travel, radio communications, electrical grids and satellite operations.