Video: Liftoff of Delta 4 with WGS 7

United Launch Alliance, the incumbent leader in U.S. rocketry, goes for its 100th flight Friday, a milestone nine years in the making after eclectic missions to Mars, the moon and Jupiter, and deployments of commercial, military and reconnaissance spacecraft.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket departs Vandenberg Air Force Base today at 10:30 a.m. local time (1:30 p.m. EST; 1830 GMT) to deliver the commercial WorldView 4 Earth-imaging satellite into polar orbit for DigitalGlobe.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, standing 194 feet tall and and weighing a million pounds, unleashes two million pounds of thrust from its main engine and three solid-fuel boosters today to launch the EchoStar 19 commercial Internet broadcast satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida.