Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

The Starlink 6-96 mission added another 29 broadband internet satellites to the low Earth orbit constellation. SpaceX launched from Space Launch Complex 40 on Friday, Jan. 9, at 4:41 p.m. EST (2141 UTC).

NASA has formally certified SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch all but the space agency’s most costly robotic science missions, beginning with a a U.S.-French oceanography satellite set for liftoff from California in July.

SpaceX is more than a week into a company-led probe of a launch pad explosion Sept. 1 that destroyed a Falcon 9 booster and an Israeli communications satellite, but the investigation so far has turned up no smoking gun on the cause of the mishap, Elon Musk said Friday.