Photos: Atlas 5 rocket soars from West Coast

After years of delays, the core stage for NASA’s first Space Launch System moon rocket rolled out of its New Orleans factory Wednesday, heading for a NASA site in Mississippi for a test-firing before engineers hope to ship the rocket to its Florida launch base by this fall.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket unleashed two million pounds of thrust at 7:19 p.m. PST (10:19 p.m. EST) on Dec. 12 to blast off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on the NROL-35 mission. See photos of the launch from the press viewing site.

Arianespace launched an Ariane 5 rocket on its sixth and final flight of the year at 2037 GMT (3:37 p.m. EST) Tuesday, blasting off from Kourou, French Guiana, with India’s heaviest-ever satellite and a South Korean weather satellite equipped with a U.S.-made imaging camera.