Driven by three RS-68A main engines, a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifted off early Sunday from Cape Canaveral carrying NASA’s Parker Solar Probe on a historic mission to study the sun.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, standing 206 feet tall and and weighing 1.3 million pounds, unleashes two-and-a-half million pounds of thrust from its main engine and five solid-fuel boosters to launch the Navy’s MUOS 5 satellite from Cape Canaveral.

Three new crew members embarked on a six-month expedition aboard the International Space Station Thursday with a launch from Kazakhstan on top of a Russian Soyuz rocket at 0805 GMT (4:05 a.m. EDT). NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and crewmates Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner docked with the space station at 1413 GMT (10:13 a.m. EDT) Thursday.