Video: Liftoff of Atlas 5 rocket with Mexico’s Morelos 3

Firing off a launch pad on the fringes of the Amazon rainforest, a European Vega rocket climbed into space Tuesday night and deployed a new optical surveillance craft for the Italian military and a French-Israeli environmental satellite to monitor vegetation, snow cover and coastal waterways.

These photos taken Aug. 6 show the liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Israeli-owned Amos 17 communications satellite, backdropped by dreary skies after thunderstorms passed through Cape Canaveral earlier in the day.

Headed to a relic from the solar system’s formation over four billion years ago, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample return craft was moved to Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 launch pad today in preparation for liftoff Thursday aboard an Atlas 5 rocket en route to Asteroid Bennu hoping to find the seeds of life.