Drone’s view of Sunday’s SpaceX rocket landing

For its first mission of the year, SpaceX launched the Airbus-built Turksat 5A communications satellite to cover Turkey, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa with data relay and television broadcast services. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 9:15 p.m. EST Thursday (0215 GMT Friday).

The CAS500-2 mission lifted off from pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 12 a.m. PDT (3 a.m. EDT / 0700 UTC). The Korea Aerospace Industries’ Compact Advanced Satellite 500 (CAS500) satellite was the first to deploy about an hour after liftoff.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, did his best to set low expectations heading into the first test flight of the gargantuan Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket this week. “Just don’t blow up the launch pad,” Musk said.