Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

A United Launch Atlas 5 rocket is set to launch the U.S. Air Force’s fourth Advanced Extremely High Frequency communications satellite from Cape Canaveral. This timeline shows the major mission events planned over a three-and-a-half-hour flight to an optimized geostationary transfer orbit.

NASA is modifying plans to send astronauts back to the moon in 2024 by taking the Gateway — a mini-space station to be assembled in lunar orbit — out of the critical path in favor of a simplified architecture, according to the agency’s chief of human spaceflight.

NASA’s live television coverage of the first human spaceflight to take off from the Kennedy Space Center in nearly nine years will include features familiar to launch viewers, and new camera views to document the historic flight of astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station.