Q&A with George Ricker, principal investigator for the TESS mission (members only)

Up to 24 launches are planned from Cape Canaveral in 2015, thanks to jam-packed manifests for SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to send up satellites for the U.S. military, NASA and commercial telecom operators.

SpaceX launched more than 2,500 of its satellites so far this year. It executed liftoff of its Falcon 9 rocket from pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base on Friday at 1:41 p.m. PDT (4:41 p.m. EDT / 2041 UTC).

Watch as SpaceX successfully returns the first stage of its Falcon 9 booster to a landing at Cape Canaveral just minutes after it blasted off.