Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

SpaceX called off the planned launch of a Falcon 9 rocket Friday at Cape Canaveral, halting the countdown less than a minute before liftoff to allow time to perform additional ground system checkouts before the mission’s next launch opportunity no earlier than Sunday.

Rocket Lab’s commercial Electron booster fired into orbit from New Zealand on Sunday, carrying a flock of 13 CubeSats on the company’s first mission chartered by NASA, and closing out a landmark year for the new smallsat launch provider as Rocket Lab aims to grow its flight rate to at least one per month in 2019.

Watch the pre-launch news conference held Thursday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to preview liftoff of the agency’s TDRS-M data relay satellite aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral.