Live coverage: Soyuz MS-14 docks at space station

Towering more than 30 stories tall, the mobile gantry structure at the Delta 4-Heavy rocket’s launch pad at Cape Canaveral was wheeled into position for liftoff of the triple-core launcher Thursday with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) today to send NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on a seven-year, 4.4-billion-mile mission to rendezvous with Asteroid Bennu and bring a sample of the primordial object back to Earth. Follow the mission in our live journal.

The Russian manufacturer of Angola’s first communications satellite announced Friday that it has reestablished contact with the spacecraft after engineers stopped receiving signals shortly after its launch earlier this week.