Photos: Liftoff of Atlas 5 from California

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket climbed away from Cape Canaveral early Sunday, and its first stage booster returned to a drone ship parked in the Atlantic Ocean after sending a heavyweight commercial communications satellite toward orbit for Telesat.

Ready to deliver 1.5 million pounds of thrust Thursday morning, an Atlas 5 rocket was rolled from its assembly building to the launch pad today for its national security satellite-deployment flight.

United Launch Alliance called off the launch of a Delta 2 rocket from California’s Central Coast early Tuesday after boats ventured into a restricted safety exclusion zone and engineers ran out of time to resolve a technical problem on the launcher.