Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

The final flight of a Delta 2 rocket, a mainstay of the U.S. launch industry for nearly 30 years, began at 6:02 a.m. PDT (9:02 a.m. EDT; 1302 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with NASA’s ICESat 2 Earth science satellite.

The Starlink 17-18 mission added 25 more satellites to SpaceX’s low Earth orbit megaconstellation. Liftoff from pad 4E happened at 4:00:19 a.m. PDT (7:00:19 a.m. EDT / 1100:19 UTC).

Nine Merlin engines ignited and throttled up to nearly 2 million pounds of thrust Sunday during a brief hold-down firing of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, sending a plume of smoke out of the flame trench at Kennedy Space Center’s historic launch pad 39A as the company preps for a space station cargo mission next weekend.