Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket roars away from launch complex 41 at Cape Canaveral carrying a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Europe’s new Aeolus winds observatory blasted off at 2120 GMT (5:20 p.m. EDT) Wednesday aboard a solid-fueled Vega rocket from French Guiana, kicking off a three-year mission to chart the motion of Earth’s atmosphere.

A senior NASA official said Tuesday that the Space Launch System, a huge heavy-lift rocket years behind schedule, could launch astronauts on a moon landing mission in 2024 on just its third flight to meet a goal announced last month by Vice President Mike Pence, while commercial companies will be entrusted with more responsibility to develop a lunar lander and a modest mini-space station, or Gateway, in lunar orbit.