Photos: Tuesday’s Atlas 5 rollout

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:47 p.m. PDT (4:47 p.m. EDT; 2047 GMT) Monday with a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.

Rolling out on the eve of liftoff with the GOES-S weather satellite, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket journeyed 1,800 feet from its vertical assembly hangar to Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 launch pad Wednesday.

This is our comprehensive fact sheet previewing the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket deployment of the classified NROL-52 payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.