Video: Orion flight highlights

One of the final pieces for the first test flight of NASA’s huge Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket recently arrived at the Kennedy Space Center, joining other elements already at the Florida spaceport awaiting shipment of the SLS core stage once it completes testing at a NASA facility in Mississippi.

United Launch Alliance’s second-to-last Delta 4-Heavy rocket is scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral April 20 with a classified cargo for the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency, a mission that will mark ULA’s first flight of the year, officials announced this week.

United Launch Alliance ground crews on California’s Central Coast are gearing up to send a classified U.S. government spy satellite into orbit as soon as Monday — weather permitting — aboard one of the company’s four remaining Delta 4-Heavy rockets.