Photos: Tuesday’s Atlas 5 rollout

An Ariane 5 rocket lifted off Thursday at 2345 GMT (7:45 p.m. EDT), flying from a French Guiana launch pad to geostationary transfer orbit with the ViaSat 2 and Eutelsat 172B communications satellites.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has denied a protest filed by Sierra Nevada Corp. challenging NASA’s selection of competitors Boeing and SpaceX to build commercial human-rated space capsules to fly astronauts to the International Space Station.

This photo gallery shows the commercial Cygnus cargo resupplier for the International Space Station on Monday at Kennedy Space Center being encapsulated in the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket’s payload fairing for the planned Dec. 3 liftoff.