Stats: Atlas 5 history and backlog

Mission managers Tuesday granted approval to proceed with Wednesday’s rollout of the Atlas 5 rocket and Thursday’s launch to deliver the commercial Cygnus cargo ship into orbit to resupply the International Space Station.

The next flight of the U.S. military’s reusable X-37B spaceplane — scheduled for liftoff May 16 from Cape Canaveral — will carry more experiments into orbit than any of the winged ship’s previous missions, including two payloads for NASA and a small deployable satellite built by Air Force Academy cadets.

NASA’s InSight spacecraft, the next lander to head for Mars, lifted off Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. Launch occurred in a blanket of fog at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT; 1105 GMT).