Photos: Tuesday’s Atlas 5 rollout

Arianespace will fit in a bonus launch of a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana in May to deliver two more European Galileo navigation satellites to orbit, giving the French launch services firm 12 missions on its 2016 manifest, officials said Thursday.

Under a brilliant moon, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket flashed to life and vaulted away from Cape Canaveral late Sunday, boosting the European Space Agency’s $1.5 billion Solar Orbiter probe out of Earth’s gravitational grip toward a multi-year voyage around the sun that will give scientists their first glimpse of the star’s poles.

A space-bound NASA satellite was hauled aboard a military transport aircraft from a Southern California factory to the launch site in Florida on Friday and its United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket booster arrived by sea from the manufacturing plant in Alabama today.