Live coverage: Falcon 9 rocket launches, and lands, at Cape Canaveral

The most powerful configuration of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket blasted off April 14 from Cape Canaveral, hauling multiple U.S. Air Force satellites to a perch high above the equator after piercing a clear evening sky over Florida’s Space Coast with 2.6 million pounds of thrust.

SpaceX’s rideshare program has launched more 1,000 smallsats for more than 130 customers. Liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base happened at 11:56 a.m. PDT (2:56 p.m. EDT, 1856 UTC).

Sixty more SpaceX-owned Starlink internet satellites rocketed through a moonlit winter sky over Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 launcher early Thursday, while another Falcon 9 sat on a different launch pad a few miles away to loft another 60 Starlink payloads Friday.