Live coverage: Kennedy Space Center to reopen Friday

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket took off for its sixth flight of the year Monday from launch pad 39A in Florida, lofting an Inmarsat mobile broadband communications satellite to an orbit more than 40,000 miles above Earth.

The Falcon 9 booster that dramatically flew back to Earth last month following a commercial satellite launch ignited again Friday in a hold-down test at SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral launch pad, days before the company is due to launch its next mission from California, officials said.

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.