Photos: Atlas 5 rocket soars from West Coast

On top of an Atlas rocket, the place where orbital spaceflight for American astronauts began, will sit Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to launch humans into space starting next year.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday carrying the U.S. Air Force’s next GPS 3-series navigation satellite destined for an orbit more than 12,000 miles above Earth.

Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken plan to reveal a name for their Crew Dragon spaceship on the day they launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a test flight to restore orbital human spaceflight capability to the United States.