Live coverage: SpaceX launches first upgraded Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket

The National Reconnaissance Office has confirmed it will launch a payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral later this month, a mission on SpaceX’s schedule that was not publicly disclosed until recently.

A European environmental satellite designed to monitor Earth’s oceans, lakes and vegetation lifted off Wednesday aboard a modified Russian ballistic missile originally built to carry nuclear warheads. The mission launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome around 500 miles north of Moscow at 1757:51 GMT (1:57:51 p.m. EDT).

A hydrogen-fueled main engine and four solid rocket boosters combined to propel a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket off its launch pad at Cape Canaveral on March 15, successfully sending a U.S. Air Force communications satellite into orbit.