Q&A with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine (members only)

Teams working in Northrop Grumman’s spacecraft factory in Southern California have connected the spacecraft and science modules of the James Webb Space Telescope for the first time, a major milestone as engineers prepare to verify a fix to tears in the observatory’s sunshield, and begin launch vibration and acoustic testing in the coming months.

The MS-25 mission was scrubbed on Thursday, but the root cause is still under investigation. The earliest that liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome can now occur is Saturday, March 23, pending the outcome of the investigation.

Astronauts have captured views of Hurricane Florence raging in the Atlantic Ocean and heading toward a likely landfall in the Carolinas on the U.S. East Coast, with one flight engineer calling the storm a “no-kidding nightmare.”