Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

This is the ascent timeline to be followed by the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in launching NASA’s MMS mission on March 12 at 10:44 p.m. EDT.

NASA will receive $18 billion in the federal government’s 2015 budget passed by the U.S. Senate on Saturday, winning nearly all the funds the agency says it needs this year to develop commercial space capsules to fly astronauts to the International Space Station by the end of 2017.

The addition of a U.S. Air Force communications satellite has capped the assembly of a 218-foot-tall United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket at Cape Canaveral set for liftoff the evening of March 13.