Video: Weather causes Atlas 5 countdown hold

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is being readied for launch with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office early Sunday, the commercial launcher’s 33rd overall flight, and first dedicated to a U.S. government national security mission.

Likened to raising a cellular tower 22,300 miles high, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will put the Navy’s fourth mobile communications satellite into space to expands the rugged smartphone system to global coverage.

Astronauts have captured views of Hurricane Florence raging in the Atlantic Ocean and heading toward a likely landfall in the Carolinas on the U.S. East Coast, with one flight engineer calling the storm a “no-kidding nightmare.”