Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

Narrated animation explains the United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket ascending to space with the NROL-37 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office through T+plus 6 minutes, 30 seconds before going into a news blackout.

An early bird rocket launch from the Florida spaceport will take to the skies before dawn Saturday when an Atlas 5 lofts a classified U.S. government satellite.

A NASA spacecraft being readied for launch in 2018 will make repeated trips through the sun’s outer atmosphere, passing within 4 million miles of the star’s blazing surface at more than 430,000 mph to shed light on what powers the sun’s high-temperature corona, the origins of the solar wind and the causes of potentially catastrophic solar storms.