Watch the Falcon Heavy fire up its engines

Two months after its foggy blastoff from California on a Falcon 9 rocket, a $364 million oceanography satellite has returned the first data from its radar altimeter mapping global sea levels, catching this year’s ongoing El Niño in the act.

China led the world with 34 orbital launch attempts in 2019 — including two failures — followed by 22 flights from Russian-operated launch pads and 21 satellite delivery missions originating from U.S. spaceports, all of which were successful.

SpaceX will deploy a new rocket landing platform off Florida’s Space Coast to enter a rotation with another drone ship stationed at Cape Canaveral, company founder Elon Musk said Monday.