Photos: Tuesday’s Atlas 5 rollout

The mobile service tower retracts from the Atlas 5 rocket, revealing the 191-foot-tall vehicle for liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, carrying the classified NROL-79 national security payload for the U.S. government.

A Soyuz rocket lifted off from South America late Thursday to haul up the next two satellites for Europe’s Galileo navigation system, giving the network its ninth and 10th operational members. Launch occurred at 0208:10 GMT Friday (10:08:10 p.m. EDT Thursday).

Leading all other nations, U.S. launch providers flew 44 missions in 2020 that aimed to place payloads in Earth orbit or deep space, with 40 successes. China followed with 35 successful orbital missions in 39 launch attempts.