Photos: Atlas 5 rolls out for launch

A 151-foot-tall Soyuz launcher climbed into space from French Guiana on Thursday with the Boeing-built SES 15 communications satellite bound for an operating position over the Americas in geostationary orbit.

The U.S. military’s highest capacity communications satellite ever built was successfully launched into space tonight, departing Cape Canaveral aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket at 6:53 p.m. EST (2353 GMT).

Two astronauts floated outside the International Space Station Sunday for the first in a series of spacewalks to upgrade the lab’s aging solar power system, assembling a support fixture that eventually will hold a new solar blanket.