Video: NASA and SpaceX brief media on space station cargo flight

NASA said Saturday that the launch of four astronauts on SpaceX’s first operational Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station has been delayed from Oct. 31 until “no sooner than early-to-mid November,” allowing time for SpaceX to resolve an issue with Falcon 9 rocket engines that halted a recent launch attempt with a GPS navigation satellite.

Towering more than 20 stories tall, the 8-million-pound mobile gantry at the Atlas 5 rocket’s launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, was retracted into position late Friday for liftoff of NASA’s InSight mission to Mars.

Astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko ended a record-setting 340-day stay in orbit with a fiery plunge to Earth Tuesday, settling to a jarring rocket-assisted touchdown in Kazakhstan to close out a medical research voyage that may help pave the way for flights to Mars.