Video: Liftoff of Delta 4 with WGS 7

Liftoff of an Ariane 5 rocket from a tropical launch pad in South America was halted moments after its main engine ignited Tuesday in a rare last-second abort for the heavy-lift launcher.

An early bird rocket launch from the Florida spaceport will take to the skies before dawn Thursday when an Atlas 5 lofts a classified U.S. government satellite.

Aiming to reduce risk and costs, NASA has decided to launch the first two modules of the Gateway station in lunar orbit on the same heavy-lift rocket in 2023, rather than fly them on separate rockets and dock them together in deep space, according to the the agency’s chief human spaceflight manager.