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

Spaceflight Now members can watch a live view of Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 launch pad as an Atlas 5 rocket counts down to liftoff at 5:02 p.m. EST (2202 GMT) Thursday with the GOES-S weather satellite.

A solid-fueled Long March 11 rocket fired out of a container aboard a barge in the Yellow Sea on Wednesday with seven satellites heading into orbit on China’s first space launch from an ocean vessel.

The world’s most powerful operational rocket flashed to life at 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT) Tuesday and climbed into a moonlit summer sky from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the same site where the Apollo 11 astronauts left Earth for their historic moon landing nearly 50 years ago.