Atlas 5 launches NROL-61 as seen from the NASA Press Site

The 8-million-pound mobile service tower is retracted from around the Atlas 5 rocket, revealing the 19-story-tall vehicle for liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on NROL-55.

An Atlas 5 lifts off at dawn creating a spectacular sky show as it races toward orbit carrying the fifth Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF 5) communications satellite for the U.S. Air Force.

America’s next Mars rover, a $2.1 billion nuclear-powered vehicle to search for evidence that life once existed there, will be launched to the Red Planet in the summer of 2020 by a powerful Atlas 5 rocket.