Photos: Atlas 5 on the pad for X-37B launch

A Soyuz rocket crowned by a Fregat upper stage carrying 11 Russian, German and U.S. satellites into orbit lifted off Thursday from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East, the first flight from the country’s newest spaceport since a failure in November.

These photos taken Friday evening show the mobile gantry being wheeled away from a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket at Cape Canaveral, hours before its scheduled blastoff with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.

Two experimental Chinese satellites have launched on a Kuaizhou 1A rocket from the Jiuquan space base in northwestern China.