Photos: Falcon takes flight

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Central Coast at 10:42:18 a.m. PST (1:42:18 p.m. EST; 1842:18 GMT) Sunday with the Jason 3 oceanography satellite. A secondary objective of the mission to recover the first stage on a barge in the Pacific Ocean failed.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 10:17 p.m. EDT (0217 UTC on Oct. 22) carrying 23 Starlink satellites.

SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 rocket arrived at Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A on Thursday for a hold-down engine firing ahead of launch next week with the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane. The brief engine ignition occurred at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT).