Live coverage: SpaceX launches another batch of Starlink satellites

A senior SpaceX official said this week that “heat damage” led to the failure of a Falcon 9 booster during a landing attempt Feb. 15, but the company will press on with more launches and will likely surpass the 10-flight threshold on one of its reusable rockets soon. The next Falcon 9 launch, using a booster flying on its eighth mission, is scheduled for liftoff from Florida with 60 more Starlink internet satellites Sunday night.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket thundered into the sky over Florida’s Space Coast Sunday night and deployed a sophisticated internet satellite for Viasat into a circular orbit more than 20,000 miles over the equator, delivering for a competitor to SpaceX’s own Starlink broadband network.

NASA and U.S. military officials are reviewing a malfunction that triggered a premature engine shutdown during a flight of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket earlier this month, a cautionary step before upcoming launches with a GPS navigation satellite and astronauts on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.