Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

An airport-like viewing tower standing up to 30 stories tall is the centerpiece of SpaceX’s planned rocket refurbishment and operations base proposed for vacant land at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX continued its blistering pace of orbital launches with its ninth and final Starlink launch of August. Liftoff of its Falcon 9 rocket from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 7:49 a.m. EDT (1149 UTC).

Four astronauts strapped into their SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft Monday and rode along for an automated maneuver to relocate the capsule to a different docking port outside the International Space Station. The relocation maneuver, which concluded with a link-up with the new docking port 7:08 a.m. EDT (1108 GMT), was the first of its kind for a Crew Dragon spacecraft.