Photos: Atlas 5 rocket soars from West Coast

South Korea’s Anasis 2 military communications satellite, built in Europe by Airbus, lifted off Monday from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Launch occurred at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2130 GMT).

The U.S. Air Force’s fifth Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite, designed for secure, jam-resistant communications, is set for launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. These photos show the AEHF 5 satellite during encapsulation inside the Atlas 5’s payload shroud.

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.