Live coverage: Falcon 9 disintegrates after launch

NASA, SpaceX and its international partners met at the Kennedy Space Center on Monday and gave the go ahead for the launch of the seventh operational Crew Dragon mission to the space station.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 Starlink satellites at sunrise Monday, capping a busy long-weekend for the launch company that saw three launches and two scrubbed countdowns over four days.

A Boeing-built communications satellite lifted off at 7:21 p.m. EDT (2321 GMT) Monday on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft will add to Inmarsat’s Global Xpress network linking airplanes, ships and other mobile terminals with broadband Internet and data services.