Photos: Atlas 5 rolls out for launch

The sampling mechanism on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is stuffed with specimens captured from asteroid Bennu earlier this week — so full that some of the rocks are floating out into space. Officials said Friday they will stow the samples inside the mission’s Earth return capsule sooner than planned to minimize the loss of asteroid material.

SpaceX kept an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket on the ground Thursday after running into a problem loading super-cold liquid propellants into the launcher’s fuel tanks, postponing blastoff of a commercial communications satellite for the second day in a row.

The U.S. Air Force has been unable to send commands to the service’s newest weather satellite for nearly a month, and engineers are trying to determine if the spacecraft can be salvaged, officials said last week.