NASA's DART spacecraft and the 2nd stage booster captured 'captured about 10 hours after launch," by the Virtual Telescope Project. Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: Gianluca Masi / Virtual Telesc

The launch takes place on a milestone date, marking 20 years since the STS-114 space shuttle mission took off from Kennedy Space Center Pad 39B. The launch of Discovery on the STS-114 mission on July 26, 2005, marked the return to flight for the space shuttle after the Columbia tragedy investigation.

One of these ride-along NASA efforts is the Athena EPIC (Economical Payload Integration Cost) SmallSat, which will demonstrate a new way of more efficiently placing remote-sensing (or rather, Earth-observing) instruments into orbit.

Two NASA satellites rocketed into orbit from California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday, commencing a $170 million mission to study a phenomenon of space physics that has eluded researchers since the dawn of the Space Age.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch from Vandenberg in California on a NASA mission. Where are some spots to watch liftoff? Will there be a sonic boom?

Endeavour is scheduled to launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 39A — the liftoff site of most Apollo moon missions, including Apollo 11 — on July 31, kicking off SpaceX's Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA.

About 3,870 employees have applied to depart NASA over two rounds through the Trump administration's deferred resignation program, the agency disclosed.