Falcon 9

SpaceX set a new record Thursday for the most missions by the company’s Falcon rocket family in a year, successfully sending a cargo of 48 Starlink internet satellites and two BlackSky optical Earth-imaging spacecraft into orbit from Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Thursday night carrying 48 Starlink internet satellites and two BlackSky Earth-imaging payloads into orbit. The mission took off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral at 6:12 p.m. EST (2312 GMT), and the first stage landed on SpaceX’s offshore drone ship, completing its ninth trip to space and back.

BlackSky said Tuesday it is launching two optical Earth observation satellites as rideshare payloads on a SpaceX Starlink mission planned for liftoff this week from Cape Canaveral. The mission is set for launch Thursday, one day later than the previous schedule.

Forecasters predict a 90% chance of good weather Wednesday night at Cape Canaveral for launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a fresh group of Starlink internet satellites.

A small NASA space probe blasted off from California early Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a first-of-its-kind mission to change the orbit of an asteroid, pioneering a technique that may one day be used to divert an asteroid off of a collision course with Earth.

These photos show SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket standing on Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, hours before liftoff with NASA’s DART mission, an experiment to test how a spacecraft might deflect a hazardous asteroid away from Earth.

A first-of-its-kind asteroid deflection experiment lifted off overnight from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. SpaceX launched NASA’s DART mission on a Falcon 9 rocket at 1:21 a.m. EST Wednesday (0621 GMT; 10:21 p.m. PST Tuesday) on a 10-month mission to collide with a near-Earth asteroid, proving a technique that could protect Earth from a future threat from space.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base, heading southeast over the Pacific Ocean with NASA’s DART asteroid deflection experiment. It will take 55 minutes to deploy the DART spacecraft on an Earth escape trajectory.

A small spacecraft set to launch on a collision course with an asteroid has been encapsulated inside the payload fairing of its Falcon 9 rocket for blastoff from California this week, a mission that will mark SpaceX’s first launch with a NASA solar system science probe.

After a lull in launch activity the last few months, SpaceX plans to close out 2021 with a spurt of missions from all three of the company’s active launch pads in Florida and California, with five or more Falcon 9 flights planned before the end of the year.