Live coverage: Dragon supply ship returns to Earth

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.

After several near-misses in tries to catch payload shrouds jettisoned from Falcon 9 rockets climbing into space, a high-speed boat tasked with retrieving the fairings for SpaceX to reuse has been upgraded and dispatched into the Pacific Ocean ahead of a launch Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force in California.

This is the third and final launch that Amazon booked onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is scheduled for no earlier than Oct. 12 at 8:29 p.m. EDT (0029 UTC).