Photos: Atlas launch seen from pad cameras

Watch a replay of the launch of an Atlas 5 rocket carrying the $1.2 billion SBIRS GEO Flight 4 satellite into orbit.

One of four landing legs mounted to the base of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster failed to engage on the rocket’s final descent to a barge in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, leaving wreckage scattered on the football field-sized deck of the landing ship after an otherwise successful launch with an ocean research satellite.

The covert follow-on satellite program that will serve as a replacement to the nation’s surveillance “eyes” from space begins launching in 2018 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.