Photos: Tuesday’s Atlas 5 rollout

A Glonass navigation satellite blasted off Sunday aboard a Soyuz rocket, reaching an orbit nearly 12,000 miles above Earth to join Russia’s fleet of positioning, navigation and timing spacecraft.

“We had a terrific ride into space aboard the United Launch Alliance’s Delta 2 vehicle. They deposited us exactly where we wanted to be with with accuracy and precision,” said Kent Kellogg, NASA’s SMAP project manager.

NASA hopes to have a new leader for the agency’s human spaceflight directorate by the end of the year to replace Bill Gerstenmaier, who held the post for nearly 14 years before his reassignment in July amid the Trump administration’s push to land humans on the moon by 2024, a NASA official said Wednesday.