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.

An Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo craft departed the International Space Station on Wednesday, heading for a higher orbit to deploy 14 CubeSats and an eventual de-orbit burn to dispose of more than 6,200 pounds of trash and other unneeded equipment packed by the station’s crew.

The U.S. Air Force this week awarded SpaceX a contract to launch a Global Positioning System satellite in early 2019, concluding the second of as many as 15 competitions the military plans to run over the next year to pit SpaceX against United Launch Alliance for rights to lift defense and intelligence-gathering payloads into orbit.