Photos: More Delta 4 launch shots

Ground crews at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California retracted a mobile gantry away from the Delta 2 rocket Monday afternoon, revealing the 128-foot-tall (39-meter) booster on its launch pad awaiting liftoff with a new polar-orbiting weather observatory.

This NASA animation depicts the OSIRIS-REx mission to grab a sample of Asteroid Bennu and return it to Earth for study. Launch from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas 5 rocket is scheduled for Sept. 8 and landing in Utah is planned for Sept. 24, 2023.

Stymied by Russian government dithering that has indefinitely grounded a launch on a modified Soviet-era missile, Iridium officials say that SpaceX agreed to move up to July the first of seven Falcon 9 launches from California with the company’s next-generation mobile communications satellites.