Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

NASA re-established contact with a wayward sun-watching science satellite Sunday nearly two years after the spacecraft suddenly dropped off line during a test, the agency said in a statement Monday.

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.

Making a fiery climb into a foggy sky Saturday over California’s Central Coast, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket dispatched NASA’s InSight lander on a 301-million-mile voyage to Mars with a package of European-built instruments to probe the inside of the Red Planet.