NASA is working with the Russian space agency to potentially extend crew stays on the International Space Station, the agency’s acting administrator said last week, as a cushion against expected delays in the development of commercial crew capsules by Boeing and SpaceX.

Engineers scrambled to keep NASA’s billion-dollar asteroid-bound OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on track for its launch last week in the aftermath of an explosion a mile away at SpaceX’s launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad Tuesday at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) with Hispasat 30W-6, a communications satellite to relay video and broadband signals between the Americas, Europe and North Africa.