Photos: Atlas 5 rolls out for Friday launch to GPS constellation

Prognosticators are predicting favorable weather conditions to launch an Atlas 5 rocket Thursday and send NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on its interplanetary journey to interrogate an asteroid and collect a surface sample for return to Earth.

The constellation-building Atlas 5 rocket from United Launch Alliance successfully deployed the fifth communications spacecraft for the Navy’s Mobile User Objective System today to form a new rugged smartphone network for the U.S. military.

This is the launch timeline to be followed by the Atlas 5 rocket’s ascent into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with the commercial WorldView 4 Earth-imaging satellite for DigitalGlobe. Launch is scheduled for Friday at 10:30 a.m. local time (1:30 p.m. EST; 1830 GMT).