Photos: Falcon takes flight

With its liftoff just 18 days away to deploy a new Global Positioning System satellite, stacking of the next United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket began Monday at the vertical assembly building outside Complex 41.

The Koreasat-6A mission took off from Launch Complex 39 A at at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 12:22 p.m. EST (1722 UTC).

When the countdown hit zero last Friday and the engines powering a previously flown Falcon 9 first stage roared to life for takeoff, the four astronauts strapped into a SpaceX Crew Dragon some 21 stories up started laughing.