Shuttle Atlantis unwrapped ahead of public debut

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley completed their final training sessions in Houston this week before their scheduled May 27 liftoff on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center, the first launch of humans from the Florida spaceport since 2011.

NASA announced Tuesday it has awarded SpaceX a $331 million contract to launch the first two pieces of the Gateway lunar outpost in 2024 using a modified version of the Falcon Heavy rocket to hurl the massive core of the deep space station toward the moon.

The enigmatic X-37B spaceplane, launched into low-Earth orbit on an experimental military mission in 2015, continues to circle the planet despite a flurry of landing rumors.