Photos: Delta 4 lights up the sky for night owl launch

NASA has agreed to consider a Boeing proposal to extend the first piloted test flight of its commercial CST-100 Starliner crew capsule from two weeks to up to six months with an extra crew member for the International Space Station, hedging against potential delays that could jeopardize U.S. crew access to the orbiting outpost.

Despite a growing number of rocket options, the availability of on-time launch services remains a key factor in getting BlackSky’s constellation of Earth-imaging smallsats into orbit. SpaceX’s rideshare launch service will give BlackSky a chance to add two more spacecraft to its fleet on a Falcon 9 rocket with the next batch of Starlink Internet payloads.

SpaceX readied a Falcon 9 rocket for takeoff Monday to launch a planet-hunting satellite for NASA that will monitor the light from countless stars to find potentially habitable planets worthy of follow-up studies by more powerful ground- and space-based observatories.