Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley completed their final training sessions in Houston this week before their scheduled May 27 liftoff on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center, the first launch of humans from the Florida spaceport since 2011.

A 180-foot-tall Ariane 5 rocket climbed into space from French Guiana on Thursday evening, but the mission ran into problems a few minutes later.

In a breath-taking display at daybreak Wednesday, an Atlas rocket powered an enormous U.S. Navy satellite into space to close the last remaining gap and give global reach to the military’s new mobile communications system.