Live coverage: Three-man station crew lands in Kazakhstan

These photos follow the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft through a final rehearsal, the late stowage of cargo, and finally the lifting of the launcher vertical atop pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This collection of official NASA photographs captures the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket rolling to the pad on Monday, successfully blasting off Tuesday and the Cygnus freighter arriving at the International Space Station on Saturday morning.

NASA officials say the International Space Station’s logistics chain was designed to absorb a launch failure like the mishap that destroyed an Orbital Sciences Corp. cargo craft in October, but pressure is on SpaceX to deliver supplies on time this year.