Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

SpaceX’s ground team hydraulically hoisted a 213-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket vertical at pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center before dawn Monday ahead of a planned liftoff with a space station-bound robotic resupply craft.

The Starlink 15-5 was SpaceX’s 59th Falcon 9 launch of the year. Liftoff from pad 4 East at Vandneberg Space Force Base happened at 6:43 a.m. PDT (9:43 a.m. EDT, 1343 UTC).

SpaceX performed a hold-down test-firing Jan. 20 of a Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral in preparation for a launch with 60 Starlink broadband satellites, but officials delayed the missions’s planned launch Tuesday due to extreme weather in the downrange recovery zone for the first stage and payload fairing. The next possible launch attempt is expected at 9:49 a.m. EST (1449 GMT) Monday.