Photos: Falcon takes flight

SpaceX test-fired a Falcon 9 rocket with a previously-flown first stage booster Friday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, keeping pace for a launch scheduled next Thursday, April 23, with the next batch of 60 Starlink broadband Internet satellites.

A test-firing of a twice-flown Falcon 9 booster Friday at Cape Canaveral paved the way for SpaceX’s next launch, scheduled for Monday night with a heavyweight Boeing-built communications satellite to beam broadband signals to Japan and the Pacific islands.

Liftoff of the Starlink 9-5 mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) happened at 1:48 a.m. PDT (4:48 a.m. EDT, 0848 UTC). This was the second of two back-to-back overnight launches.