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

This is the launch timeline to be followed by the Atlas 5 rocket’s ascent into orbit from Cape Canaveral with the EchoStar 19 satellite for HughesNet’s direct-to-home Internet connectivity. Launch is scheduled for Sunday at 1:27 p.m. EST (1827 GMT).

SpaceX and NASA launched a planet-hunting satellite Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, two days after calling off a launch attempt to conduct additional guidance, navigation and control analyses. Liftoff occurred at 6:51 p.m. EDT (2251 GMT), and the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

After a year-long delay to troubleshoot recurring erroneous data signatures from the rudder of Northrop Grumman’s air-launched Pegasus XL rocket, NASA is eager to send a $252 million research satellite into orbit as soon as Thursday night off Florida’s east coast on a mission to probe the ionosphere, a region near the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.