Photos: X-37B gallery archive

Crews hoisted a covert spacecraft atop an Atlas 5 booster rocket this morning for its trek into an equatorial orbit next week.

The launch faced long odds with poor weather in the forecast for a fourth day in a row, but SpaceX was able to launch from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday, Sept. 11, at 9:56 p.m. EDT (0156 UTC).

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral on Aug. 8 with the U.S. Air Force’s fifth Advanced Extremely High Frequency communications satellite, the second launch from Florida’s Coast in a span of less than 35 hours.