The first flight of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule

Three of Planet’s commercial SkySat Earth-imaging spacecraft will ride to space on top of a stack of SpaceX Starlink satellites next month aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, and three more will hitch a ride on another SpaceX mission later this summer.

The flight included 40 deployment events for a variety of payloads, including NASA’s Pandora spacecraft. Liftoff from pad 4E happened at 5:44 a.m. PST (8:44 a.m. EST / 1344 UTC).

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Tuesday evening, following the scrub of a planned mission for satellite communications company, SES, from Florida. The Starlink 9-1 mission sent another batch of its Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit, which included another 13 with direct to cell (DTC) capabilities.