A collection of pad photos from the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket flight to deploy the GPS 2F-12 satellite for use by the U.S. military and billions of civilians around the world.

A critical test-firing of the Space Launch System’s core stage engines cut off about a minute into a planned eight-minute burn Saturday on a test stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The rocket’s four engines ignited at 5:27 p.m. EST (2227 GMT) for a test that was to pave the way for the core stage’s shipment to the Kennedy Space Center for launch preparations.

Bruce Banerdt leads the InSight science team, and is in charge of the lander heading for Mars to study the red planet’s interior structure, collecting data that should yield new information about the environment in the early solar system, when planets coalesced and formed 4.5 billion years ago.