Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

Tuesday is shaping up to be a busy day for SpaceX, with liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a space weather satellite, an experimental booster flyback maneuver to test reusable launch technologies, and the splashdown of a Dragon capsule returning from the International Space Station.

The mission to the orbiting outpost featured three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut who will spend roughly 180 days on the space station. Liftoff occurred at 10:53 p.m. EST (0353 UTC) from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

A Falcon 9 rocket soars skyward from Cape Canaveral carrying NASA’s TESS observatory on a mission to discover planets around other stars. This was the view from the Kennedy Space Center Press Site.