TESS launch replay from launch pad camera

A collection of pad photos from the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket flight carrying the NROL-55 cargo for the National Reconnaissance Office.

A European Ariane 5 rocket fired into a gloomy sky Thursday over French Guiana and streaked into space from the tropical launch base with 2.9 million pounds of thrust from two solid rocket boosters and a hydrogen-fueled Vulcain 2 main engine.

Officials hailed an action-packed three-minute test flight Tuesday over Cape Canaveral that exercised the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort rocket, a key safety system on the capsule NASA is developing to carry astronauts back to the moon.