Photos: Thursday’s Atlas 5 rollout to launch pad

Riding the rails to the launch pad Wednesday morning, the Atlas 5 rocket was rolled out to Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 for liftoff Thursday night to deploy four NASA satellites that will probe Earth’s magnetosphere for a high-priority research project.

This is our comprehensive fact sheet previewing the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket deployment of the classified NROL-52 payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Fans of classical mythology and the fictional Star Trek universe can vote for two new candidates as the name of United Launch Alliance’s next generation rocket, with Vulcan and Zeus joining three other options in an online poll revealed earlier this week.