Photos: Atlas 5 launches SBIRS GEO Flight 3

An Atlas 5 rocket lifts off from launch complex 41 at Cape Canaveral carrying the SBIRS GEO-4 missile early warning satellite in this video shot from the Kennedy Space Center Press Site.

A NASA spacecraft being readied for launch in 2018 will make repeated trips through the sun’s outer atmosphere, passing within 4 million miles of the star’s blazing surface at more than 430,000 mph to shed light on what powers the sun’s high-temperature corona, the origins of the solar wind and the causes of potentially catastrophic solar storms.

Powered by two Russian-made RD-181 main engines, a Northrop Grumman Antares rocket fired into a mostly sunny sky Saturday afternoon over Virginia’s Eastern Shore carrying nearly 7,500 pounds of equipment to the International Space Station.