Photos: More shots of Thursday’s Atlas 5 rocket launch

Completing an October to remember, the third Atlas 5 rocket launch in just 29 days thundered into space Saturday, this time to replace an aging satellite in the Global Positioning System.

The U.S. Air Force on Thursday demolished towers once used to assemble Delta 2 rockets at Cape Canaveral for missions to Mars, four dozen flights to deploy the GPS navigation network, and numerous launches with scientific, commercial and military payloads.

Three Russian Gonets communications satellites launched late Wednesday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, riding a Soyuz rocket and Fregat upper stage into orbit on the second successful Soyuz mission in less than 24 hours.