This is our comprehensive fact sheet previewing the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket deployment of the classified NROL-42 payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

SpaceX and United Launch Alliance expect to resume launches with little or no delay after Hurricane Irma veered west of Cape Canaveral last weekend, sparing the launch base from the storm’s most extreme damage.

A new weather observatory that will track storms across the globe as it orbits from pole to pole has been trucked to its launch site in California for a long-awaited ascent into space this November.