Photos: Gantry retracted from Atlas 5

Departing Cape Canaveral at 8:37 a.m. EDT Thursday, the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted a classified national security satellite into orbit for deployment.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, flying in its basic two-stage configuration with no strap-on solids, was stacked aboard a mobile launch platform at Cape Canaveral’s Vertical Integration Facility on Feb. 22 and 23 in preparation to send Orbital ATK’s S.S. John Glenn cargo ship into orbit for the International Space Station.

NASA says initial checks show no damage to the Atlas 5 rocket or the agency’s asteroid-bound OSIRIS-REx spacecraft that stood within the Vertical Integration Facility just a mile away from the SpaceX explosion Thursday.