Photos: More shots of Thursday’s Atlas 5 rocket launch

The launch of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, on the verge of kicking off a seven-year mission culminating in passages through the sun’s atmosphere, has been delayed to Aug. 6 to resolve a technical snag encountered during encapsulation of the spacecraft inside the nose shroud of its United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket.

A detached electrical connector on the second stage of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket caused a failure on a July 4 mission that destroyed seven small commercial satellites, but the company said Friday it is on track to resume launching before the end of August.

SpaceX and United Launch Alliance have split up to $645 million in new contracts to deploy U.S. Air Force navigation and surveillance satellites into orbit from 2019 through 2021.