Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

Headed to a relic from the solar system’s formation over four billion years ago, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample return craft was moved to Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 launch pad today in preparation for liftoff Thursday aboard an Atlas 5 rocket en route to Asteroid Bennu hoping to find the seeds of life.

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.

Launch teams are readying three rockets for a series of blastoffs this week from Cape Canaveral to loft a classified orbiting spy platform for the U.S. government, a long-delayed Argentine radar imaging payload, and the next set of Starlink broadband satellites.