Photos: Atlas 5 rolls out for launch

These photos taken Friday evening show the mobile gantry being wheeled away from a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket at Cape Canaveral, hours before its scheduled blastoff with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.

A Falcon 9 launcher bolted into the sky over Florida’s Space Coast on Friday, adding the brilliant orange glare of rocket exhaust to a spectacular sunset as the 229-foot-tall booster propelled the SES 9 communications satellite into orbit to serve the Asia-Pacific with high-definition television programming and connectivity on-the-go.

After a quarter-century readying Global Positioning System satellites for launch at a Cape Canaveral Air Force Station processing hub, the final bird rolled out Saturday as the navigation program transitions to a new era.