Atlas 5/Cygnus NASA TV broadcast

The European-built Solar Orbiter spacecraft arrived in Florida late Friday after a trans-Atlantic journey from a test center in Germany, ready to begin preparations for a liftoff from Cape Canaveral in February aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.

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.

Early Friday morning, the 8-million-pound mobile service tower was retracted from around the Atlas 5 rocket, revealing the 189-foot-tall vehicle for liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, carrying the commercial WorldView 4 Earth-imaging satellite.