Live coverage: Kennedy Space Center to reopen Friday

NASA has awarded Masten Space Systems, a small company based in Mojave, California, a $75.9 million contract to deliver nine science and technology instruments to the moon’s south pole in 2022 with its XL-1 robotic lunar lander.

Japan’s seventh HTV resupply mission to the International Space Station blasted off from Tanegashima Island on Saturday aboard an H-2B rocket. The unpiloted cargo carrier launched at 1752 GMT (1:52 p.m. EDT), kicking off a nearly five-day pursuit of the space station.

Take a walk around NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft less than three weeks before its Sept. 8 launch on top of an Atlas 5 rocket. Rich Kuhns, the mission’s program manager from Lockheed Martin, points out some of the major features on the probe.