Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

The 100th rocket in America’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program, the current fleet of boosters used by the nation to get its critical assets into space, was rolled to the pad Friday morning for a vital mission on Saturday.

Vice President Mike Pence plans to travel to the Kennedy Space Center on May 27 for the first launch of astronauts from a U.S. spaceport since 2011.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft raced past a frozen remnant of the solar system’s birth early New Year’s Day, phoned home to confirm a successful flyby and readied a treasure trove of pictures and other data for transmission back to eager scientists some 4.1 billion miles away.