Photos: Most powerful Atlas 5 puts 15,000-pound satellite in orbit

SpaceX’s new Falcon Heavy rocket successfully soared into orbit Tuesday, and its two strap-on boosters came back to Cape Canaveral for an electrifying double-landing punctuated by quadruple sonic booms.

Go behind the scenes to see the labor it takes to deliver a satellite to its launch base, in this case NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-M scheduled for launch Aug. 3 atop an Atlas 5 rocket.

A day-and-a-half after launching from Virginia aboard an Antares rocket, a Northrop Grumman Cygnus supply ship loaded with nearly 7,600 pounds of experiments and provisions arrived at the International Space Station on Friday. Astronaut Anne McClain captured the Cygnus spacecraft with the space station’s Canadian-built robotic arm at 5:28 a.m. EDT (0928 GMT).