Photos: Gantry retracted from Atlas 5

Less than two weeks after its launch from Cape Canaveral, a new NOAA weather observatory has boosted itself into a circular orbit more than 22,000 miles over the equator, and officials have renamed it GOES-17 ahead of a test series before it enters service later this year.

A replay of the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket launching the Global Positioning System 2F-11 navigation spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

This photo gallery shows the U.S. Navy’s fourth Mobile User Objective System communications satellite, already encapsulated in the 18-foot-diameter nose cone, being lifted atop the United Launch Alliance Atlas-Centaur rocket last week at the Vertical Integration Facility.