Video: Vice President Al Gore attends DSCOVR launch

Tuesday is shaping up to be a busy day for SpaceX, with liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a space weather satellite, an experimental booster flyback maneuver to test reusable launch technologies, and the splashdown of a Dragon capsule returning from the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off Wednesday carrying NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory, the world’s most distant weather satellite heading for a point a million miles from Earth. Launch from Cape Canaveral occurred at 6:03 p.m. EST (2303 GMT).

A new space weather observatory to be stationed a million miles from Earth has been enclosed inside the nose cone of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff Sunday from Cape Canaveral.