Photos: Atlas 5 rocket soars from West Coast

United Launch Alliance is set to retire part of its rocket family Thursday with the final flight of the Delta 4 rocket’s “single stick” configuration, a mission set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral carrying a new GPS navigation satellite into orbit for the U.S. Air Force.

The launch of a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral was aborted three seconds before a planned liftoff at 3:28 a.m. EDT (0728 GMT). The rocket was set to loft a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.

A European Vega launcher failed Wednesday night around two minutes after liftoff from French Guiana and fell into the Atlantic Ocean, destroying an Airbus-built surveillance satellite for the United Arab Emirates.