Photos: News media shots of the NROL-52 liftoff

Onboard video cameras captured critical events during the 50th Atlas 5 rocket launch, beaming back views in stunning clarity of staging and spacecraft separation.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired into space from Florida’s Atlantic coastline Monday with a clandestine payload for a U.S. government spy agency, then returned to Cape Canaveral for a pinpoint landing.

United Launch Alliance has completed stacking of the major elements of the Atlas 5 rocket assigned to power NASA’s Perseverance rover toward Mars, but the mission’s launch date has been pushed back three days to July 20 after teams repaired an issue with a crane in the Atlas 5’s assembly building.