As it happened: NASA leadership announces delays to first Artemis crewed launch, Moon landing missions

Taking another step toward flying space tourists to the edge of space, Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin again flew its New Shepard suborbital booster Thursday with a package of microgravity research experiments.

United Launch Alliance will salvage the main engines through a mid-air recovery plan and reuse them again aboard the company’s new Vulcan rocket, saving 90 percent in booster propulsion costs, the company announced Monday.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a touch and go landing on asteroid Bennu at 6:12 p.m. EDT (2212 GMT) Tuesday. The craft aimed to collect samples from the asteroid’s gravely surface for return to Earth in 2023 for scientists to search for clues about the origins and evolution of the solar system.