Atlas 5 NROL-55 launch full broadcast

Relive the steps to stack the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral’s Vertical Integration Facility for the Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo freighter for the International Space Station.

Marking United Launch Alliance’s first rocket flight in 2017, beginning its year of national security and science-enabling missions, the Atlas 5 rocket departs Cape Canaveral carrying the SBIRS GEO Flight 3 satellite.

Bruce Banerdt leads the InSight science team, and is in charge of the lander heading for Mars to study the red planet’s interior structure, collecting data that should yield new information about the environment in the early solar system, when planets coalesced and formed 4.5 billion years ago.