Live coverage: International Space Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

NASA declared the Spitzer Space Telescope’s 16-year mission complete Thursday after sending final commands for the spacecraft to enter hibernation as it drifts farther from Earth.

A cache of cargo bound for the International Space Station lifted off on a commercial SpaceX launcher Friday, thundering into mostly clear skies over Florida’s Space Coast aboard a reused booster that made a bullseye landing back at Cape Canaveral accompanied by a crackling sonic boom.

Keith Gendreau, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, recently spoke with Spaceflight Now about a new experiment on the International Space Station to demonstrate X-ray communications in space for the first time.