Photos: Atlas 5 rocket soars from West Coast

The Atlas 5 rocket blasts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California for its late-night ascent to deploy the NROL-42 payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

An Atlas 5 rocket successfully launched another Cygnus cargo freighter for Orbital ATK Tuesday night, fulfilling the booster’s role of reestablishing America’s resupply link to the International Space Station.

Unimpeded by rain showers and a dark gray blanket of low clouds, an Ariane 5 rocket thundered away from a European-run space base in the jungle of French Guiana Tuesday to place four Galileo navigation satellites in orbit, an on-target deployment that should improve the location accuracy of new smartphones around the world.