Watch the astronauts give a tour of their new Crew Dragon spacecraft

Bill Gerstenmaier, former director of spaceflight at NASA Headquarters and a widely respected aerospace engineer and manager, has taken a consulting position at SpaceX, the California rocket company NASA helped save in 2008 with the award of a $1.6 billion contract to build and launch space station cargo ships.

The Starlink 15-9 mission will be the 200th orbital launch from Space Launch Complex 4 East to date. SpaceX is targeting liftoff of its Falcon 9 rocket at 8:36 p.m. PDT (11:36 p.m. EDT, 0336 UTC).

With Hurricane Isaias threatening Florida’s East Coast, astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are awaiting a go-ahead on plans to undock from the International Space Station Saturday, setting up a fiery plunge to splashdown Sunday, presumably in the Gulf of Mexico, to close out a 64-day flight.