Live coverage: Kennedy Space Center to reopen Friday

Beginning its fourth launch campaign of the year, the Atlas 5 rocket program has started stacking the vehicle that will boost a satellite 11,000 miles high for the Global Positioning System.

A week after two space probes from China and United Arab Emirates slipped into orbit around Mars, NASA’s $2.4 billion Perseverance rover, by far the most complex and ambitious of the three, will plunge into the red planet’s atmosphere Thursday for an automated white-knuckle descent.

NASA awarded a $73.7 million contract Friday to the California-based startup Made in Space for a 3D-printing demonstration using a free-flying small satellite to additively manufacture solar array beams in space.