Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

Lockheed Martin, the largest U.S. defense contractor, announced late Sunday that it has reached a deal valued at $4.4 billion to acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne, a supplier of engines to NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas, Delta, and Vulcan rockets.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is again standing on launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, this time with a Dragon supply ship on top ready to head on a resupply run to the International Space Station.

A sharp-eyed French military surveillance spacecraft is set for launch aboard a Soyuz rocket Monday from French Guiana into a 300-mile-high orbit, where it will collect the highest-resolution imagery ever produced by a European reconnaissance satellite.