Live coverage: SpaceX resumes launches from California

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Sunday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and carried 10 Iridium communications satellites toward a perch in low Earth orbit, then the launcher’s first stage nailed a landing on a platform positioned in the Pacific Ocean.

SpaceX managed to thread the needle with the weather and launch the first of two planned Starlink missions from Cape Canaveral in 48 hours. A Falcon 9 rocket launched from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday at 11:09 p.m. EDT (0309 UTC on Sunday). It will be followed by another Falcon 9 from nearby pad 40 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Monday.

The Starlink 11-20 mission saw SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket fly on a south-easterly trajectory upon departure from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Liftoff from pad 4E happened at 7:04 p.m. PDT (10:04 p.m. EDT / 0204 UTC).