Photos: Atlas 5 launches new weather observer

SpaceX’s second Falcon Heavy rocket is set for liftoff Thursday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the heavy-lift launcher will head on an easterly course over the Atlantic Ocean atop more than 5 million pounds of thrust.

A commercial SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule packed with a robot assistant for the International Space Station’s crew, pouches of extra strong coffee, and a NASA science instrument designed to track the health of plants on Earth left Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 rocket Friday on a three-day pursuit of the orbiting research lab.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, standing 194 feet tall and and weighing 720,000 pounds, generates 860,000 pounds of thrust from its main engine to launch the Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship on the OA-7 mission to the International Space Station.