Live coverage: Falcon 9 blasts off with X-37B mini-shuttle

Follow the key events of the Falcon 9 rocket’s ascent to orbit with 64 smallsats on Spaceflight’s SSO-A: SmallSat Express rideshare mission.

Three of Planet’s commercial SkySat Earth-imaging spacecraft will ride to space on top of a stack of SpaceX Starlink satellites next month aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, and three more will hitch a ride on another SpaceX mission later this summer.

The Starlink 17-20 mission was the seventh Starlink mission this year. Liftoff from pad 4E happened at 9:30 a.m. PST (12:30 p.m. EST / 1730 UTC).