Photos: Atlas 5 delivers success on 70th Launch

Canada’s three new Radarsat Earth observation satellites were encapsulated inside the payload fairing of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket ahead of their liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The world’s most powerful operational rocket flashed to life at 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT) Tuesday and climbed into a moonlit summer sky from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the same site where the Apollo 11 astronauts left Earth for their historic moon landing nearly 50 years ago.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off at 7:50 a.m. EDT (1150 GMT) Thursday from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover.