Video: Liftoff of Atlas 5 on space station cargo mission

NASA’s last space shuttle commander — former U.S. Navy fighter pilot Chris Ferguson — will fly Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule on its first piloted test mission to the International Space Station next year.

Two Chinese Beidou navigation satellites launched Thursday, growing the country’s home-grown space-based GPS network nearly 14,000 miles above Earth.

China’s second Long March 5 rocket fell short of orbit Sunday after lifting off from a spaceport in the southern Chinese province of Hainan, placing a cloud over the country’s plans to send a robotic sample return mission to the moon later this year.