A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral shortly after midnight Friday with Intelsat 40e, a communications satellite destined to beam broadband internet signals to airplane and cruise ship passengers across North America while hosting a NASA instrument package to monitor air pollution.
SpaceX’s next two missions will revert to launching older versions of the company’s Starlink internet satellites, instead of new second-generation Starlink platforms as originally planned, while ground teams work out unspecified problems with the first batch of upgraded Starlinks launched in February.
United Launch Alliance could load cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen propellants into a Vulcan rocket test article at Cape Canaveral for the first time in the coming weeks, timing key tests for the next-generation rocket in between flights of Atlas 5 rockets that will share the same launch complex for the next few years.
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