Falcon 9 abort seen from press site

SpaceX’s launch team ran through a traditional preflight test Monday, putting a Falcon 9 rocket through a mock countdown, loading it with propellant and briefly firing its nine engines on a launch pad in California ahead of this weekend’s liftoff with a U.S.-European oceanography satellite.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on a rideshare mission to low Earth orbit with a multitude of small payloads. The Transporter-9 mission lifted off into a clear blue sky at 10:49 a.m. PST (18:49 UTC).

A huge U.S.-built, Canadian-owned communications satellite weighing 15,600 pounds, the heaviest spacecraft of its kind ever launched, is mounted to a Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff early Sunday from Cape Canaveral on a heavy-lifting mission that previously would have required SpaceX to throw away the launcher’s first stage booster.