Photos: Atlas 5 rocket powers NROL-52 payload to space

The Perseverance rover’s sterilized sample tubes — designed to seal Martian rock and sediment for eventual return to Earth — are installed on the spacecraft as teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center prepare to enclose the rover inside the payload shroud of its Atlas 5 launcher for liftoff July 20.

Forecasters predict near-ideal weather conditions Monday night for the first launch at Cape Canaveral this year, when SpaceX plans to send another 60 Starlink broadband satellites into orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket.

SpaceX’s 50th Falcon 9 rocket flight took off from Florida’s Space Coast shortly after midnight Tuesday with the Hispasat 30W-6 communications satellite, firing into a moonlit night sky with 1.7 million pounds of thrust.