Live coverage: SpaceX delivers joint SES/EchoStar satellite to orbit

The mission was the 25th flight of the Falcon 9 first stage booster, tail number 1071. The Falcon 9 lifted off from pad 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 1:10 p.m. PDT (4:10 p.m. EDT, 2010 UTC).

A commercial SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule packed with a robot assistant for the International Space Station’s crew, pouches of extra strong coffee, and a NASA science instrument designed to track the health of plants on Earth left Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 rocket Friday on a three-day pursuit of the orbiting research lab.

Concerns over an unspecified part flying on the upper stages of United Launch Alliance’s rockets have delayed the launch of a GPS satellite on a Delta 4 booster from July 25 to no earlier than Aug. 22. The same issue has also delayed an Atlas 5 launch.