Video: OA-7 Cygnus freighter departs International Space Station

A United Launch Atlas 5 rocket is set to loft three military satellites for the U.S. Air Force on a mission codenamed AFSPC 11. This timeline shows the major mission events planned over a six-hour flight to a near-geostationary orbit.

An early bird rocket launch from the Florida spaceport will take to the skies before dawn Thursday when an Atlas 5 lofts a classified U.S. government satellite.

More than six years after back-to-back failures left the Taurus rocket with an uncertain future, a redesigned version of the launcher sporting a new name is set to loft 10 small Earth-imaging satellites into orbit Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.