Q&A with Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX (members only)

This is the second batch of customer satellites that SpaceX will launch to a mid-inclination orbit. Liftoff from pad 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base happened at 3:34 a.m. PST (6:34 a.m. EST, 1134 UTC).

SpaceX started the week with the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after sunrise Monday, delivering a classified U.S. government spy satellite to orbit as the booster’s first stage returned to Cape Canaveral for a vertical landing.

Crew Dragon astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken thanked their space station crewmates for a productive two-month visit, readied their SpaceX capsule for departure and stood by for a final “go” from flight controllers to undock Saturday night, setting up a Gulf of Mexico splashdown Sunday afternoon.