Video: Saturday’s SpaceX launch

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk said Thursday that the company’s recovery fleet in the Atlantic Ocean recovered the two halves of the Falcon Heavy’s payload shroud after the heavy-lifter’s second launch from the Kennedy Space Center. Musk said the company plans to reuse the fairing for the first time later this year.

Two months after its foggy blastoff from California on a Falcon 9 rocket, a $364 million oceanography satellite has returned the first data from its radar altimeter mapping global sea levels, catching this year’s ongoing El Niño in the act.

Japan’s sixth HTV supply ship is slated to depart a picturesque spaceport on Tanegashima Island on Friday to start a four-day pursuit of the International Space Station with a cache of experiments, supplies and six lithium-ion batteries to begin overhauling the orbiting lab’s vast electrical system.