Live coverage: SpaceX Falcon Heavy launches NASA’s Psyche on mission to a metal asteroid

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 orbital launch year is about to kick off in Florida in the same way it ended 2023: with the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. On board the workhorse launch vehicle is a communications satellite for Sweden-based Ovzon. Liftoff of the rocket is set at the opening of a ten-minute launch window that begins at 6:04 p.m. EST (2304 UTC). It will mark the second Falcon 9 flight in less than 24 hours, following the launch of 21 Starlink satellites from California late Tuesday.

The first well-resolved image of the faraway chunk of rock fleetingly visited by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on New Year’s Day reveals the object — officially named 2014 MU69 but nicknamed Ultima Thule — is made of two lobes scientists say came together in an ancient slow-speed collision just as the solar system’s planets were forming.