Photos: Atlas 5 rolls out for launch

Officials have accepted a Friday launch date for a commercial cargo ship to the International Space Station after Range availability scuttled notions of moving up the Atlas 5 flight by a day.

Two pioneering communications satellites purely powered by plasma rocket thrusters lifted off from Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 launcher Wednesday, starting missions to broadcast video across Asia and Latin America, and improve navigation for airplanes crossing the United States.

Look back on last week’s liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, capping a busy two weeks for the launch company with a successful satellite deployment flight for Intelsat.