Photos: Falcon takes flight

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida happened Monday at 8:35 a.m. EDT (1235 UTC), after four earlier attempts were scrubbed.

On its second flight, SpaceX’s mammoth Falcon Heavy rocket hurled an Arabsat communications satellite the size of a school bus nearly one-quarter the way to the moon Thursday, days after NASA’s administrator identified the privately-developed rocket as a backup to the agency’s behind-schedule Space Launch System for sending astronauts back to the lunar surface.

After a quarter-century readying Global Positioning System satellites for launch at a Cape Canaveral Air Force Station processing hub, the final bird rolled out Saturday as the navigation program transitions to a new era.