Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

Launch pads and critical facilities at the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station are braced for the onslaught of Hurricane Matthew overnight Thursday, one of the most powerful storms to threaten Florida’s Space Coast since the dawn of the space age 50 years ago.

United Launch Alliance has packed two days of rollout, countdown and launch activities into a two-minute video highlighting Friday night’s blastoff of an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral with the U.S. Air Force’s SBIRS GEO Flight 4 missile-warning satellite.

With NASA’s attention at the red planet shifting to collecting and bringing rock samples back to Earth — a feat that could take a decade with costs that will leave little money for other Mars missions — the space agency is counting on its workhorse Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter continuing its imaging and radio relay functions for nearly 10 more years.