Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 12:17 p.m. EST (9:17 a.m. PST; 1717 GMT) Saturday with an oceanography satellite jointly developed by U.S. and European space and weather agencies. The rocket’s first stage booster returned to a bullseye landing back at Vandenberg.

A previously-flown SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster conducted a test-firing Monday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ahead of a planned launch Oct. 7 with an Airbus-built communications satellite made for SES and EchoStar.

Russia’s Progress MS-05 supply ship lifted off Wednesday on top of a Soyuz-U rocket, climbing into orbit from a snow-covered launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on the way to the International Space Station.