Photos: News media shots of the NROL-52 liftoff

Orbital ATK’s bid to join the U.S. military’s roster of rockets to haul the most critical national security satellites into orbit faces stiff competition from entrenched launch providers and billionaire entrepreneurs, but the company is confident its Next Generation Launch system will win one of three funding agreements the Air Force is expected to award this summer.

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.

This gallery of U.S. Air Force photos show technicians, wearing protective SCAPE suits, initially check for hazardous hypergolic fuel vapors around the X-37B spaceplane on the Shuttle Landing Facility runway and the subsequent tow of the vehicle to its newly-renovated hangar at the Kennedy Space Center.