Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

An early bird rocket launch from the Florida spaceport will take to the skies before dawn Thursday when an Atlas 5 lofts a classified U.S. government satellite.

NASA has awarded SpaceX a $109 million contract to launch the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, a NOAA space weather observatory, a robotic scout to map water on the moon, and two other ridealong payloads on a single Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in 2024.

The Russian Soyuz MS-03 crew transport spacecraft is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome with three passengers on a two-day trek to the International Space Station.