The overnight launch marked the second Falcon 9 flight since the July 11 mishap that grounded the rocket. Liftoff happened at 1:09 a.m. EDT (0509 UTC).
Hours after launching a batch of cargo and provisions to the International Space Station on Tuesday, SpaceX ground teams wheeled another Falcon 9 rocket into the hangar at Cape Canaveral for a commercial satellite launch set for April 27.
Engineers from SpaceX, Boeing and Inmarsat spent the last few weeks preparing a Falcon 9 rocket and the Inmarsat 5 F4 communications satellite for liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.