Drone’s view of Sunday’s SpaceX rocket landing

A novel NOAA climate observatory with a unique past arrived at Cape Canaveral to begin two months of launch preparations, testing, and fueling before liftoff aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The Starlink 12-26 mission represents the 490th Falcon 9 rocket launch to date. SpaceX is targeting a liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 11:29 a.m. EDT (1529 UTC).

SpaceX’s launch team loaded liquid propellants into the company’s first upgraded Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket Friday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the countdown rehearsal culminated in a brief ignition of the launcher’s nine Merlin main engines on the launch pad.