Stats: Atlas 5 history and backlog

A United Launch Atlas 5 rocket is set to loft three military satellites for the U.S. Air Force on a mission codenamed AFSPC 11. This timeline shows the major mission events planned over a six-hour flight to a near-geostationary orbit.

Go behind the scenes to see the labor it takes to deliver a satellite to its launch base, in this case NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-M scheduled for launch Aug. 3 atop an Atlas 5 rocket.

DigitalGlobe’s WorldView 4 commercial satellite, which will join sister-craft WorldView 3 in orbit to snap the highest quality Earth imagery available on the market at 31-centimeter resolution, was built by Lockheed Martin and will be launched Friday atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.