Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

United Launch Alliance’s second-to-last Delta 4-Heavy rocket is scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral April 20 with a classified cargo for the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency, a mission that will mark ULA’s first flight of the year, officials announced this week.

Rising from the ground and into the launch pad gantry, a clandestine U.S. national security payload was fitted atop its Atlas 5 booster rocket in California today for the ride into space on March 1.

The cohort of ten women and men will train for the next two years to become eligible for mission assignments to low Earth orbit and beyond. This is the first astronaut candidate class to consist of more women than men.