Photos: Delta 4 awaits blastoff

A commercial communications satellite stayed on Earth after a last-second launch abort Sunday, the third time in five days that SpaceX has scrubbed the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.

United Launch Alliance teams at Cape Canaveral hoisted a Centaur upper stage on top of an Atlas 5 rocket Friday at launch pad 41, completing the initial build-up of the launch vehicle slated to carry Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule into space in December on an unpiloted test flight to the International Space Station.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 10:29 a.m. EDT (1429 GMT) Wednesday with two Boeing-built communications payloads for Eutelsat and Asia Broadcast Satellite. A secondary objective to recover the first stage offshore in the Atlantic Ocean failed.