Photos: Spectacular start to Delta 4-Heavy’s satellite deployment mission

The addition of a U.S. Air Force communications satellite has capped the assembly of a 218-foot-tall United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket at Cape Canaveral set for liftoff the evening of March 13.

Riding a half-million pounds of thrust, a Minotaur 4 rocket fired off a launch pad in Virginia, surpassed the speed of sound in less than 20 seconds, and vaulted into orbit Wednesday with four classified payloads for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Watch a replay of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket taking off from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with the BulgariaSat 1 communications satellite, as viewed from the press viewing site around three miles away.