Photos: Atlas 5 on the pad awaiting liftoff on NROL-52

SpaceX and its visionary founder Elon Musk win the lion’s share of public attention in the commercial rocket arena, with dramatic, increasingly routine booster landings and spectacular stunts like the launch of Musk’s Tesla Roadster on the maiden flight of the company’s new Falcon Heavy rocket last month.

After being put back in position around the Delta 4-Heavy rocket after Thursday’s weather scrub, the 330-foot tall mobile service tower is retracted again at Cape Canaveral’s pad 37B for launch that will place the NROL-37 payload into Earth orbit.

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.