Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

Already encapsulated in the 18-foot-diameter nose cone, the Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane is hoisted atop the Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral’s Vertical Integration Facility.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A on Thursday, then its first stage booster touched down on a nearby landing target after sending a U.S. Air Force X-37B spaceplane toward orbit.

United Launch Alliance teams at Cape Canaveral launched an Atlas 5 rocket at 6:13 a.m. EDT (1013 GMT) Thursday with the U.S. Air Force’s fifth Advanced Extremely High Frequency communications satellite. The AEHF 5 satellite will join a network of geostationary relay stations providing secure, jam-resistant video, voice and data links for the U.S. military.