Christian Davenport

Despite working on next-generation suits for years, they won’t be ready until 2025 at the earliest, an inspector general determined.

Oliver Daemen, who is planning to attend college in the Netherlands, would travel with the Blue Origin founder, his brother Mark Bezos, and Wally Funk, an 82-year-old aviator.

In choosing SpaceX alone, NASA sent a message that it fully trusts the growing company to fly its astronauts for its signature human exploration program.

Cameras mounted at various points on the spacecraft chronicle the descent as the rover deploys its parachute and jettisons its heat shield.

It also wants to open up the orbiting laboratory to more commercial interests.

With some significant breakthroughs, led by high-profile billionaires such as Musk, Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos and Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson, the commercial space sector has started to capture the public imagination and make space travel cool again.

If successful, the attempt could transform the L.A.-based SpaceX from a pure rocket company into a massive high-speed Internet provider that would take on major companies in the developed world but also make first-time customers out of the billions of people who are currently not online.