Video: Liftoff of Atlas 5 on NROL-55

The next flight of the U.S. military’s reusable X-37B spaceplane — scheduled for liftoff May 16 from Cape Canaveral — will carry more experiments into orbit than any of the winged ship’s previous missions, including two payloads for NASA and a small deployable satellite built by Air Force Academy cadets.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket stands poised for flight with the Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane and a batch of CubeSats including the LightSail. The rocket was rolled to Complex 41 on Tuesday in preparation for launch on Wednesday.

SpaceX is readying a Falcon 9 rocket booster for launch Monday at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on a record-setting mission with 64 smallsats on-board that will also mark the launch provider’s first use of the same first stage for a third flight.