Live coverage: SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 rocket test-fired in Florida

SpaceX teams across the United States are readying for what the company’s chief operating officer predicts will be a record number of launches in 2020. Before the end of January, SpaceX aims to perform four Falcon 9 launches from Florida’s Space Coast — three for the company’s Starlink broadband network, and a crucial in-flight abort test for the Crew Dragon spacecraft no earlier than Jan. 11.

NASA has awarded SpaceX a $109 million contract to launch the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, a NOAA space weather observatory, a robotic scout to map water on the moon, and two other ridealong payloads on a single Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in 2024.

The mission, dubbed NG-21, was the second out of three planned launches of a Cygnus spacecraft onboard a Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff happened on Sunday, Aug. 4, at 11:02 a.m. EDT (1502 UTC).