Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

A Soyuz rocket with a three-person crew heading for the International Space Station lifted off at 1357 GMT (9:57 a.m. EDT) Wednesday in the final launch currently scheduled from Gagarin’s Start, a historic site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan from where Yuri Gagarin departed on the first human spaceflight in 1961. Beginning next year, Soyuz crews will blast off from a different pad at Baikonur.

Loaded with supplies to keep the International Space Station’s crew fed, clothed and busy with new science projects, a Cygnus cargo vessel sped into orbit today atop an Atlas 5 rocket.

The 100th flight of America’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program — a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket — departed Cape Canaveral on Saturday evening carrying the most advanced U.S. weather satellite ever made.