SpaceX launched its 12th Falcon 9 rocket of the year Thursday from California with Taiwan’s Formosat 5 Earth observation satellite. The two-stage rocket lifted off at 11:51 a.m. PDT (2:51 p.m. EDT; 1851 GMT) and deployed the Taiwanese-built spacecraft into polar orbit. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster successfully landed on a drone ship downrange in the Pacific Ocean.

Watch NASA’s Orion inflight abort test post-launch news briefing, held at the Kennedy Space Center two hours after the test.

The sampling mechanism on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is stuffed with specimens captured from asteroid Bennu earlier this week — so full that some of the rocks are floating out into space. Officials said Friday they will stow the samples inside the mission’s Earth return capsule sooner than planned to minimize the loss of asteroid material.