4K Video: Watch the Falcon 9 test fire its 1st stage engines (members only)

Almost exactly three days after taking off a few miles to the north at the Kennedy Space Center on SpaceX’s historic first crew launch, a 15-story-tall Falcon rocket booster returned to Florida’s Space Coast Tuesday aboard a football field-sized drone ship.

The last planned batch of high-resolution SkySat commercial Earth-viewing reconnaissance satellites owned by Planet will accompany 58 Starlink broadband relay stations on a climb into orbit Tuesday from Cape Canaveral on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, adding to the world’s two largest commercial satellite fleets.

United Launch Alliance early Thursday delayed the launch of a triple-core Delta 4-Heavy rocket — the largest launcher in the company’s fleet — until Saturday to allow engineers more time to resolve an issue with a ground pneumatics control system.