Already encapsulated in the 18-foot-diameter nose cone, the Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane is hoisted atop the Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral’s Vertical Integration Facility.
Credit: ULA
See our earlier launch coverage.
News
NASA unveils renamed solar probe
A NASA spacecraft being readied for launch in 2018 will make repeated trips through the sun’s outer atmosphere, passing within 4 million miles of the star’s blazing surface at more than 430,000 mph to shed light on what powers the sun’s high-temperature corona, the origins of the solar wind and the causes of potentially catastrophic solar storms.
Atlas 5
Videos: Cygnus prepped for mission to space laboratory
This is video footage documenting preparations for the commercial Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo freighter to perform the OA-7 mission to the International Space Station. Activities occurred at the Kennedy Space Center’s Space Station Processing Facility and the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. The craft will be boosted into orbit by a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on April 18 at 11:11 a.m. EDT (1511 GMT).