Photos: Atlas 5 rocket soars from West Coast

Returning to the days of rollouts and launches in a span of only a few hours, the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 program is looking to resume this whirlwind experience.

Launch teams are readying three rockets for a series of blastoffs this week from Cape Canaveral to loft a classified orbiting spy platform for the U.S. government, a long-delayed Argentine radar imaging payload, and the next set of Starlink broadband satellites.

A Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket is back at Cape Canaveral after a cross-country ferry flight Tuesday under an L-1011 carrier jet, ready for final checkouts and a countdown dress rehearsal before an airborne launch off Florida’s east coast Oct. 9 with NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer satellite.