Photos: Atlas 5 rocket aims for International Space Station

The Atlas 5 rocket blasts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California for its late-night ascent to deploy the NROL-42 payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

United Launch Alliance teams loaded super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into an Atlas 5 rocket Friday at Cape Canaveral during a countdown dress rehearsal for a planned launch next month with the Solar Orbiter mission, a robotic spacecraft to study the origins of the solar wind and image the sun’s poles for the first time.

Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir floated back outside the International Space Station Wednesday for history’s second all-female spacewalk, installing two powerful new lithium-ion batteries on the far left end of the lab’s solar power truss.