This is the launch timeline to be followed by the Atlas 5 rocket’s ascent into orbit from Cape Canaveral with the European-built Solar Orbiter spacecraft to study the sun.
Launch is scheduled 11:03 p.m. EST Sunday (0403 GMT Monday) at the opening of a two-hour launch window.
The 189-foot-tall (57.6-meter) rocket will arc to the southeast from Florida’s Space Coast on its first flight of the year. It will be the 82nd Atlas 5 launch overall since United Launch Alliance’s workhorse rocket debuted in August 2002.
The timeline below ends with the conclusion of the primary mission, the deployment of the Solar Orbiter spacecraft on an interplanetary escape trajectory into heliocentric orbit to begin its mission studying the sun.
The most powerful rocket ever built by India, boosted by two solid-fueled strap-on motors, a twin-engine core and a cryogenic upper stage, lifted off Monday to prove it can haul satellites into orbit nearly twice as heavy as India’s existing launchers. Launch occurred at 1158 GMT (7:58 a.m. EDT).
This photo gallery shows the Mexican Morelos 3 communications satellite being encapsulated in the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket’s payload fairing for the planned Oct. 2 liftoff.
Fifty years to the day after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, a NASA astronaut, an Italian flight engineer and a Russian commander geared up for launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft Saturday on a six-hour flight to the International Space Station.