Video: Liftoff of Delta 4 with WGS 7

The U.S. Air Force’s next GPS navigation satellite met its ride into space this week with the spacecraft’s bolting on top of a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket at Cape Canaveral in preparation for liftoff Aug. 22.

Representatives from NASA, Boeing and Lockheed Martin argued that the United States shouldn’t skip past the Moon in favor of Mars when it comes to crewed deep space exploration. The discussion came up during a panel at the SpaceCom conference concerning the forthcoming Artemis 2 mission.

A Russian Soyuz rocket launched Monday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome with 22 satellites for operators in Russia, Europe, Canada, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates.