Jason 3 Mission Science Briefing

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sporting human-rating upgrades such as new composite pressurant tanks briefly ignited its nine Merlin engines Thursday afternoon on a launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and SpaceX later declared the pre-launch milestone complete in preparation for a critical test flight with a commercial crew capsule as soon as late February.

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East occurred at 4:06 p.m. PDT (7:06 p.m. EDT, 2306 UTC) on Monday, April 7.

Our comprehensive fact sheet previewing the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket deployment of NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-M.