Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

The 377th Delta rocket begins its journey to space carrying a military communications satellite funded by Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and New Zealand in a deal that gives the allies access to the U.S. military’s worldwide Wideband Global SATCOM system.

A United Launch Delta 4 rocket lifted off Friday from the SLC-6 launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, powering into orbit from a historic seaside complex originally developed for crewed missions.

United Launch Alliance teams began stacking an Atlas 5 rocket inside a vertical hangar at Cape Canaveral Monday in preparation for an early February launch with the Solar Orbiter spacecraft, a joint U.S.-European probe that will take the first pictures of the sun’s poles.