Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

The U.S. military’s mini space shuttle successfully returned to Earth today, touching down on Runway 15 at the Shuttle Landing Facility after spending 718 days in space.

NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-M, a communications router for the space station and dozens of science spacecraft, blasted off from Cape Canaveral at 8:29 a.m. EDT on Friday atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.

Boeing specialists working inside a former space shuttle hangar in Florida started fueling the company’s first spaceflight-ready Starliner capsule this week ahead of the ship’s rollout to its launch pad later this month. The fueling milestone is a major step in the Starliner launch campaign, and comes after engineers concluded that human error led to a parachute deployment malfunction during a crew capsule abort test Monday.