Live coverage: SpaceX launches another batch of Starlink satellites

On its first launch of the year, a Russian-made Proton rocket lifted off Thursday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with a French-built, Russian-owned communications satellite.

This gallery of photos shows the rollout Tuesday of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket and Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule to pad 41 at Cape Canaveral, plus additional views of the 172-foot-tall launcher standing next to the crew access tower Wednesday as teams prepared for a countdown rehearsal.

It’s Steve Clarke’s job to merge the goals of space scientists with NASA’s strategic plans for exploring the solar system, two factors which are not always in lock-step, as the space agency seeks to return humans to the moon, and eventually send astronauts to Mars.