Q&A with Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive

This photo gallery shows the classified National Reconnaissance Office payload, already encapsulated in the 14-foot-diameter nose cone, being lifted atop the United Launch Alliance Atlas-Centaur rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base for liftoff Oct. 8.

Narrated animation explains the United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket ascending to space with the NROL-37 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office through T+plus 6 minutes, 30 seconds before going into a news blackout.

Boeing specialists working inside a former space shuttle hangar in Florida started fueling the company’s first spaceflight-ready Starliner capsule this week ahead of the ship’s rollout to its launch pad later this month. The fueling milestone is a major step in the Starliner launch campaign, and comes after engineers concluded that human error led to a parachute deployment malfunction during a crew capsule abort test Monday.