Photos: Atlas 5 rolls out for launch

Boeing is touting a lunar lander concept that the company claims could launch in one piece on an upgraded version of NASA’s Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket — which Boeing largely builds — and deliver astronauts to the moon’s surface in 2024 without going through NASA’s planned Gateway mini-space station.

Rising from the ground and into the launch pad gantry, a clandestine U.S. national security payload was fitted atop its Atlas 5 booster rocket in California today for the ride into space on March 1.

Sending the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on an interplanetary trajectory to Asteroid Bennu, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket thunders away from Cape Canaveral Thursday at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT).