Falcon 9 goes upright after sunrise in time-lapse video

SpaceX conducted its first launch from Florida in more than two months Thursday, when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center with the Qatari Es’hail 2 communications satellite at 3:46 p.m. EST (2046 GMT). The Falcon 9’s reused first stage landed on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Starlink 6-98 mission added 29 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites to the low Earth orbit constellation. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 1:08 p.m. EST (1808 UTC).

Rocket Lab’s second launch from Virginia took off at 6:38 p.m. EDT (2238 GMT) Thursday. The company’s carbon fiber Electron small satellite launcher carried two commercial radar remote sensing satellites into orbit for Capella Space.