Powerful Rocket Launches Light Up the Skies Just Hours Apart (Photos)

Just before dawn today (Sept. 2), a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying a military communications satellite. Earlier in the day (12:37 a.m. EDT (0437 GMT), a Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying three human passengers headed for the International Space Station.