The next flight of the U.S. military’s reusable X-37B spaceplane — scheduled for liftoff May 16 from Cape Canaveral — will carry more experiments into orbit than any of the winged ship’s previous missions, including two payloads for NASA and a small deployable satellite built by Air Force Academy cadets.
An experimental cargo return craft launched as a secondary payload on China’s powerful Long March 5B rocket malfunctioned during its return to Earth on Wednesday, while an unpiloted prototype for the country’s next-generation crew capsule continues raising its orbit before its scheduled landing Friday, Chinese officials said.
Aiming to reduce risk and costs, NASA has decided to launch the first two modules of the Gateway station in lunar orbit on the same heavy-lift rocket in 2023, rather than fly them on separate rockets and dock them together in deep space, according to the the agency’s chief human spaceflight manager.
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