Photos: Falcon takes flight

A Falcon 9 launcher bolted into the sky over Florida’s Space Coast on Friday, adding the brilliant orange glare of rocket exhaust to a spectacular sunset as the 229-foot-tall booster propelled the SES 9 communications satellite into orbit to serve the Asia-Pacific with high-definition television programming and connectivity on-the-go.

SpaceX has slowed development of the Falcon Heavy rocket, a mega-booster made of three Falcon 9 booster cores strapped together, as the company recovers from a launch failure last month, delaying the new rocket’s debut until early 2016.

The primary payload, NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) was joined by two rideshare payloads heading to Lagrange Point 1. Liftoff from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center occurred at 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 UTC).