Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

An extended mission for the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage after launch Thursday with a space station cargo ship helped demonstrate SpaceX’s ability to perform long-duration flight sequences to inject U.S. military payloads directly into high-altitude geosynchronous orbit.

Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center tasked with overseeing launches of scientific satellites and interplanetary probes will be responsible later this year for ensuring six major missions safely get into space over a span of a little more than six months, beginning with the launch of NOAA’s new GOES-S weather observatory on an Atlas 5 rocket March 1.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will send one of Viasat’s next-generation broadband satellites toward geostationary orbit from Cape Canaveral some time between 2020 and 2022, the companies announced Monday.