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By Melissa Lambarena | NerdWallet

As back-to-school season approaches, your kids may have outgrown their clothes — but they don’t have to outgrow your budget.

Families with children in elementary through high school plan to spend an average of $874.68 on clothing, shoes, school supplies and electronics, according to data from the National Retail Federation. For college students and their families, the expected amount on items for the coming year is an average of $1,364.75.

Here’s how credit cards can cut some of those costs.

1. Rewards

Reward rates vary by type of card, but a decent return for cash-back credit cards might range from 2% back per dollar spent to 5% back on rotating bonus categories. Those rewards can be redeemed for cash or a statement credit to offset school purchases, for example, or applied to future travel.

A credit card that earns cash back generally requires good credit (typically, FICO scores of 690 or higher). A rewards credit card is ideal only if you pay your balance off in full every month to avoid interest charges. Otherwise, the steep interest rates on these cards will cancel out the value of rewards. read more

United Launch Alliance is about the surpass its total number of launches in 2023 with a planned mission for the Space Force early Tuesday.

An Atlas V rocket on the USSF-51 mission is set to lift off at 6:45 a.m. at the opening of a three-hour window from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41.

This is the 100th national security mission flown by ULA across its fleet of rockets. It will be the final one on an Atlas V, which has just 16 rockets left. Eight of those are set aside for Amazon launches of its Project Kuiper internet satellites, six set aside for Boeing’s Starliner and one set to fly a communications satellite for ViaSat.

Future ULA launches will be on its new Vulcan Centaur rocket, which flew for the first time in January and is set for a second flight as early as September.

This is just the fourth launch for ULA in 2024, which followed up the Vulcan debut with the final launch of the Delta IV Heavy in April and an Atlas V for the Starliner Crew Flight Test in June. ULA only managed three launches in 2023. The most ULA has flown is 16 launches in 2009. read more

As Boeing’s Starliner nears two months in space, teams performed a hot fire test of thruster performance and helium leaks on the spacecraft over the weekend to help inform the decision of when the spacecraft will come home and if its two NASA astronaut passengers will be coming with it.

Boeing announced in a press release the test of the Starliner’s Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters was performed Saturday afternoon while it was docked to the International Space Station. Teams with NASA and Boeing also monitored the helium system for the Crew Flight Test mission.

“Both teams were very happy with the results,” said NASA’s Starliner flight director Chloe Mehring in the press release.

The spacecraft arrived to the ISS on June 6 one day after launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board. Dubbed the Crew Flight Test mission, the astronauts are amid the first crewed flight of the spacecraft as part of Boeing’s efforts to have it certified for use alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. read more