Photos: Atlas 5 rolls out for launch

Virgin Orbit could attempt its first orbital test launch later this month over the Pacific Ocean southwest of Los Angeles, capping a development program for an air-launched small satellite carrier that began in earnest eight years ago.

America’s next Mars rover, a $2.1 billion nuclear-powered vehicle to search for evidence that life once existed there, will be launched to the Red Planet in the summer of 2020 by a powerful Atlas 5 rocket.

Watch the Atlas 5 rocket and OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return spacecraft pre-launch news conference and the mission science briefing held on Launch-minus 2 days at the Kennedy Space Center.