Photos: Delta 4 lights up the sky for night owl launch

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:47 p.m. PDT (4:47 p.m. EDT; 2047 GMT) Monday with a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday carrying the U.S. Air Force’s next GPS 3-series navigation satellite destined for an orbit more than 12,000 miles above Earth.

Several NASA astronauts, plus Boeing test pilot Chris Ferguson, recently participated in a training session at Cape Canaveral, practicing how they would evacuate from the Atlas 5 rocket’s launch pad in the event of a countdown emergency.