Photos: Atlas 5 launches navigation craft from Cape Canaveral

Launching for the 50th time, an Atlas 5 rocket flew a milestone mission Wednesday in deploying a Global Positioning System satellite for the worldwide utility.

A Northrop Grumman Cygnus supply ship — named the S.S. Katherine Johnson for the trailblazing NASA mathematician portrayed in “Hidden Figures” — was loaded with time-sensitive cargo Friday at a launch pad in Virginia for a midday blastoff Saturday toward the International Space Station.

A new sunshade, or visor, designed to reduce the brightness of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband Internet satellites will debut on the company’s next launch, a measure intended to alleviate astronomers’ concerns about impacts on observations through ground-based telescopes, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Monday.