Photos: Atlas 5 on the pad at sunset

The United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket fired away from Cape Canaveral at 1:51 p.m. EDT today to deploy a covert surveillance satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, the spacecraft that will grab a piece of Asteroid Bennu and return it to Earth, shipped to Kennedy Space Center from the Lockheed Martin production facilities in Denver on May 20 aboard an Air Force C-17.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral at 8:38 a.m. EST (1338 GMT) Friday to place the Global Positioning System 2F-12 navigation satellite into space. Follow the mission in our live journal.