Video: Groundbreaking for commercial crew access tower

Northrop Grumman called off the launch of an Antares rocket and a Cygnus space station cargo freighter Thursday night on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, the third aborted countdown in less than 24 hours for three different U.S. rockets.

The penultimate satellite in the current generation of Global Positioning System spacecraft will be deployed Friday, capping a hectic four weeks with three launches from two coasts for the Atlas 5 rocket fleet.

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.