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

Preview the deployment of the advanced GOES-R weather satellite aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in the pre-launch news conference held at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, Nov. 17.

United Launch Alliance and SpaceX recently won contracts worth $739 million to send six missions into orbit for the U.S. military, and the Air Force has announced a new title for its flagship launcher program, dropping “expendable” from the name in a new era of reusable rockets.

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.