Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

Good weather for launching a rocket is forecast for Cape Canaveral and the Space Coast on Thursday morning when a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 is scheduled to take flight.

Our comprehensive fact sheet previewing the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket deployment of NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-M.

Crews working on Virginia’s Eastern Shore this week raised a top secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office — the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency — atop a solid-fueled Minotaur 4 rocket for liftoff July 15 on the first Minotaur launch in nearly three years.