Live coverage: Soyuz sends Russian and two Americans to space station

NASA launch commentator George Diller called the Atlas 5 with Cygnus, his final liftoff as the voice of launch control before retirement next month. He has worked at the Kennedy Space Center for nearly four decades and served as the commentator for such memorable launches as Hubble, Cassini, Mars Pathfinder, the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers and the final space shuttle mission.

The first launch from Russia’s new cosmodrome in the country’s Far East will not occur until at least early 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last week, in a widely-anticipated delay after reports of botched construction and corruption beleaguering the spaceport project.

The last flight of the single-core variant of United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4 rocket lifted off at 9:06 a.m. EDT (1306 GMT) Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The 207-foot-tall launcher carried a GPS navigation satellite into orbit for the U.S. Air Force.