Photos: Atlas 5 rocket soars from West Coast

The stacking of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket this week at Cape Canaveral signals the start of a busy six-week campaign to ready ULA’s trusty workhorse launcher for its debut in a new human-rated configuration in mid-December.

The liftoff of Europe’s first mission to Jupiter aboard an Ariane 5 rocket was scrubbed Thursday in French Guiana due to a high risk of lightning at the launch site, delaying until Friday the start of the JUICE spacecraft’s voyage of exploration.

Loaded onto a SpaceX recovery ship, the Crew Dragon capsule that performed a successful in-flight abort test Sunday over Florida’s Space Coast pulled into Port Canaveral hours later after being retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean.