Photos: Thursday’s Atlas 5 rollout to launch pad

An Ariane 5 rocket emerged from the final assembly building at the Guiana Space Center in South America on Monday for the journey across the tropical spaceport to the ELA-3 launch zone, where the 179-foot-tall (54.8-meter) booster will lift off Tuesday with a pair of commercial communications satellites.

Churning out the launches at a rapid pace, the Atlas 5 program sent another rocket soaring like clockwork Thursday for deployment of a national security satellite duo from California.

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket will deliver the U.S. Air Force’s tenth Wideband Global SATCOM communications satellite to a supersynchronous transfer orbit around 37 minutes after lifting off from Cape Canaveral.