Photos: Delta 4 powers from launch pad on military mission

SpaceX’s launch team loaded liquid propellants into the company’s first upgraded Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket Friday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the countdown rehearsal culminated in a brief ignition of the launcher’s nine Merlin main engines on the launch pad.

Structural failure of the nozzle at the base of a rocket engine powering an unpiloted New Shepard spacecraft toward the edge of space last September triggered a dramatic-but-safe in-flight abort, builder Blue Origin announced Friday, saying the company has identified fixes and plans to resume sub-orbital flights “soon.”

Boeing’s commercial human-rated spaceship designed to ferry NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station will be named the CST-100 Starliner, extending the company’s naming theme to the final frontier, officials announced Friday.