Watch a live view of SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral launch pad (members only)

A modest privately-funded instrument package built by a company in Luxembourg became the first commercial to the moon to get off the ground with a fiery nighttime launch aboard a Chinese rocket.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket climbed away from Cape Canaveral early Sunday, and its first stage booster returned to a drone ship parked in the Atlantic Ocean after sending a heavyweight commercial communications satellite toward orbit for Telesat.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Nov. 5 carrying the U.S. Air Force’s next GPS 3-series navigation satellite destined for an orbit more than 12,000 miles above Earth.