Live coverage: Kennedy Space Center to reopen Friday

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket was rolled to the pad today at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 in preparation for Friday’s liftoff. The flight will deliver the Mobile User Objective System satellite No. 5 into orbit, fulfilling a five-launch, four-year effort to assemble the military’s secure smartphone mobile communications network. Launch is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT).

When the countdown hit zero last Friday and the engines powering a previously flown Falcon 9 first stage roared to life for takeoff, the four astronauts strapped into a SpaceX Crew Dragon some 21 stories up started laughing.

Images taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft when it flew by an object the size of a large metropolitan area at the frontier of the solar system Jan. 1 have revealed the miniature world has a more flattened shape than the flyby’s initial pictures suggested.