Photos: Delta 4 awaits blastoff

NASA has placed an order with Boeing for the first operational mission to ferry a crew to the International Space Station in a new era of commercial human spaceflight.

Meteorologists are anticipating favorable odds of good weather during the countdown to launch an Atlas 5 rocket and U.S. military satellite on Thursday evening from Cape Canaveral.

An Ariane 5 rocket lifted off Thursday at 2345 GMT (7:45 p.m. EDT), flying from a French Guiana launch pad to geostationary transfer orbit with the ViaSat 2 and Eutelsat 172B communications satellites.