Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

More photos show the successful liftoff of the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket flight carrying the Cygnus commercial cargo spacecraft for Orbital ATK and the International Space Station.

Delivering two-and-a-half million pounds of ground-shaking thrust at takeoff, more than any rocket flying from Cape Canaveral these days, the mighty vehicle was rolled from its assembly building to the launch pad Monday for Wednesday’s early morning blastoff.

Ground controllers have beamed the final commands to NASA’s Kepler telescope, turning off the spacecraft’s transmitters and disabling the craft’s automatic recovery software after the planet-hunting observatory ran out of fuel last month.