Live coverage: Atlas 5 countdown and launch journal

Two million pounds of firepower successfully launched a behemoth Delta 4-Heavy rocket and a top-secret eavesdropping surveillance satellite into space Saturday, embarking on a taxing climb directly into geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the Earth to deploy one of the pinnacles of U.S. intelligence-gathering.

Rocket Lab scrubbed a planned launch from New Zealand Wednesday with 10 small Earth observation satellites for customers in the United States and Japan. Officials have not confirmed a new target launch date for the Electron rocket.

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.