Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

Keith Gendreau, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, recently spoke with Spaceflight Now about a new experiment on the International Space Station to demonstrate X-ray communications in space for the first time.

Spaceflight Now members can watch a live view of Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 launch pad as an Atlas 5 rocket counts down to liftoff at 5:02 p.m. EST (2202 GMT) Thursday with the GOES-S weather satellite.

Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken undocked from the International Space Station Saturday aboard a Crew Dragon capsule, heading for a parachute-assisted splashdown Sunday in the Gulf of Mexico to wrap up a 64-day test flight of SpaceX’s commercial human-rated spaceship.