Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

Some of America’s most critical surveillance satellites, final members of other spacecraft series and a probe that will touch an asteroid are among 15 rocket flights planned by United Launch Alliance in 2016.

Check out photos of the encapsulation of the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich oceanography satellite inside the payload shroud of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket before its launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

SpaceX launch crews rolled out the company’s next Falcon 9 rocket to pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, then lifted the two-stage launcher vertical for a hold-down engine firing Thursday in preparation for launch next week with a South Korean-owned commercial communications satellite.