Photos: Falcon takes flight

A communications satellite built for the South Korean military arrived at Cape Canaveral this week from an Airbus factory in France to begin final preparations for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in July.

The Starlink 17-8 mission was just the seventh new booster for the company out of more than 100 launches this year. SpaceX achieved liftoff from pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 8:51 p.m. PDT (11:51 p.m. EDT / 0351 UTC).

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket climbed away from Cape Canaveral early Sunday, and its first stage booster returned to a drone ship parked in the Atlantic Ocean after sending a heavyweight commercial communications satellite toward orbit for Telesat.