Photos: Thursday’s Atlas 5 rollout to launch pad

A day before blastoff with two Intelsat communications satellites, an Ariane 5 rocket rolled into position on its launch pad in French Guiana on Tuesday behind a 540-horsepower Titan truck, and these close-up snapshots show technicians preparing for the journey.

A new weather observatory that will track storms across the globe as it orbits from pole to pole has been trucked to its launch site in California for a long-awaited ascent into space this November.

Carrying a sophisticated billion-dollar missile detection satellite for the U.S. military, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday with 1.6 million pounds of thrust from a Russian RD-180 main engine and twin solid rocket boosters.