Photos: Falcon takes flight

Stormy weather near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center kept SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on the ground Thursday, delaying liftoff of a commercial supply ship with equipment and experiments for the International Space Station until Saturday.

The Starlink 17-13 mission also represented the 180th Falcon 9 launch from pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Liftoff happened 5:59:59 p.m. PST (8:59:59 p.m. EST / 0159:59 UTC).

An Ariane 5 rocket emerged from the final assembly building at the Guiana Space Center in South America on Monday for the journey across the tropical spaceport to the ELA-3 launch zone, where the 179-foot-tall (54.8-meter) booster will lift off Tuesday with a pair of commercial communications satellites.