Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

Under a brilliant moon, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket flashed to life and vaulted away from Cape Canaveral late Sunday, boosting the European Space Agency’s $1.5 billion Solar Orbiter probe out of Earth’s gravitational grip toward a multi-year voyage around the sun that will give scientists their first glimpse of the star’s poles.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket stands atop Space Launch Complex 3-East at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on the eve of Wednesday’s NROL-79 satellite-deployment mission for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Some of America’s most critical surveillance satellites, final members of other spacecraft series and a probe that will touch an asteroid are among 15 rocket flights planned by United Launch Alliance in 2016.