Q&A with Joe Anderson of Space Logistics LLC (members only)

An official weather outlook issued by U.S. Air Force meteorologists Thursday calls for partly cloudy skies on Florida’s Space Coast for liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket just after sunrise Sunday with a clandestine payload for the U.S. government’s intelligence agencies.

United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifted off at 11:10 a.m. PST (2:10 p.m. EST; 1910 GMT) Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, after a month-long delay to troubleshoot a hydrogen leak in one of its boosters. The heavy-lifter was on a mission to send a U.S. government spy satellite into orbit.

With a Falcon 9 rocket launch Friday, SpaceX added 57 more satellites to the Starlink broadband fleet and deployed a pair of piggyback commercial Earth-imaging reconnaissance satellites for BlackSky, wrapping up a busy week that began with SpaceX’s return of two NASA astronauts to Earth and the first low-altitude test flight of the company’s next-generation Starship vehicle.