Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

Likened to raising a cellular tower 22,300 miles high, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will put the Navy’s fourth mobile communications satellite into space to expands the rugged smartphone system to global coverage.

The first launch by SpaceX for the U.S. Space Force on June 30 carried the third in a new line of modernized GPS navigation satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral.

Continuing support of the International Space Station amid the coronavirus pandemic, Russian teams transferred a Soyuz rocket to a launch pad in Kazakhstan on Wednesday in preparation for liftoff with a Progress resupply freighter.