Photos: Atlas 5 on the pad at sundown

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.

The Pentagon has awarded at least $162 million in contracts to Aerojet Rocketdyne and United Launch Alliance for development of the AR1 and BE-4 rocket engines, candidates to power the first stage of a next-generation rocket and replace the Russian-made engine currently flying on the Atlas 5 launcher.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral at 6:28 a.m. EDT (1028 GMT) today to deploy the Mexican Morelos 3 mobile communications satellite.