Photos: Another SBIRS soars atop Atlas 5

Kicking off United Launch Alliance’s ambitious 2016 with as many as 15 launches planned for the U.S. military, intelligence community, NASA and commercial clients, an Atlas 5 rocket will thunder to orbit Friday to deploy the last satellite in the current generation of GPS navigation spacecraft.

Rocket Lab’s fifth flight of the year is set for liftoff as soon as Wednesday (U.S. time) carrying a small experimental satellite to orbit for Astro Digital, a Silicon Valley company aiming to demonstrate technologies in space after an earlier focus on Earth observation.

The mission represented a short turnaround time for a national security mission, launching just three months after getting the call up from the government. Liftoff occurred at 1:37 p.m. EDT (1737 UTC).