Live coverage: Kennedy Space Center to reopen Friday

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk announced Monday plans to send two paying “private individuals” on a week-long flight around the moon and back to Earth by the end of next year.

NASA’s heavy-lifting mega-rocket and its ground support systems at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will not be ready for launches until at least mid-2018, even with extra funding approved by Congress, the space agency’s senior human spaceflight official told lawmakers.

The four-member crew will now fly onboard Dragon Endurance instead of SpaceX’s fifth Crew Dragon spacecraft as originally intended. Launch has moved up to Wednesday, March 12, “pending mission readiness and completion of the agency’s certification of flight readiness process.”