Photos: Atlas 5 powers away with NROL-61 payload

A European Vega launcher failed Wednesday night around two minutes after liftoff from French Guiana and fell into the Atlantic Ocean, destroying an Airbus-built surveillance satellite for the United Arab Emirates.

Get a preview of Thursday’s United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket flight in these video highlights packages from previous missions by the big booster for NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office from Cape Canaveral in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Performing a successful spacelift mission for the U.S. spy satellite agency, an Atlas 5 rocket delivered a surveillance package into orbit today believed by analysts to be another pair of tandem sleuths to scoop up radio signals from adversarial ships at sea.