Video: Liftoff of Atlas 5 rocket with Mexico’s Morelos 3

A European Vega rocket deployed six commercial satellites in orbit, including a new Airbus-built eye-in-the-sky for high-resolution Earth-imaging, on a successful launch from French Guiana on Wednesday night after two of the last three Vega missions failed.

Mounted on a mobile platform, a European Ariane 5 rocket followed dual rail tracks across the Guiana Space Center in South America on the way to its jungle launch complex Monday, a day before its scheduled blastoff with four satellites to expand Europe’s independent navigation network.

Work on Boeing’s CST-100 commercial crew capsule will ramp up at the program’s new home base in Florida this year, with construction of a crew access tower at the Atlas 5 rocket’s launch pad underway and assembly of a spacecraft test article due to begin in a converted space shuttle hangar.