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

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, standing 206 feet tall and and weighing 1.3 million pounds, unleashes two-and-a-half million pounds of thrust from its main engine and five solid-fuel boosters to launch the Navy’s MUOS 5 satellite from Cape Canaveral.

Bruce Banerdt leads the InSight science team, and is in charge of the lander heading for Mars to study the red planet’s interior structure, collecting data that should yield new information about the environment in the early solar system, when planets coalesced and formed 4.5 billion years ago.

The United Launch Alliance flight highlights reel for the Delta 2 rocket and NASA’s SMAP observatory from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.