Pour one out for NASA’s large flying laboratory, an old and hardworking DC-8 aircraft that the space and aeronautics agency just retired. The plane came into the world in 1969, the same year that NASA astronauts first walked on the moon during the Apollo era. The agency converted it to be a flying lab after buying the aircraft from Alitalia in 1985 and started using it for missions in 1987, during the space shuttle era. Its final resting place is at Idaho State University, where it will serve as a ground-based training aircraft for mechanics.

But life, and science, keep cruising onward: The plane’s successor is an even bigger aircraft, a modern Boeing 777 that will become NASA’s next flying laboratory. It’s due to start conducting science flights late next year.

From the moment The Sympathizer was announced, it was met with a combination of excitement and apprehension. The excitement came from the involvement of Park Chan-wook, the director of Korean thriller classics such as Oldboy, who seemed tailor-made to adapt such a sharp, darkly acidic story as Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer winner. But some of the apprehension, and a dash of that shared excitement, came from the casting of Robert Downey Jr. in not one, but four different roles.