Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

Air Force meteorologists are giving favorable weather odds for the Delta 4 rocket to launch a pair of space surveillance satellites early Friday morning from Cape Canaveral.

A Vega rocket lifted off from a tropical launch pad in French Guiana at 1351 GMT (8:51 a.m. EST) Monday with Gokturk 1, a sharp-eyed reconnaissance satellite built in France and owned by the Turkish armed forces.

Onboard video cameras captured critical events during the 50th Atlas 5 rocket launch, beaming back views in stunning clarity of staging and spacecraft separation.