The launch, which came days after the company celebrated its 20th anniversary, was pushed back to 12:42 a.m. EDT when stormy weather near Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station had cleared.
The spacecraft was initially scheduled to launch from a Falcon 9 rocket at 11:23 p.m. EDT but it was delayed "due to unfavorable weather," the company said in a statement. Within half an hour of the new launch time, forecasts showed that the weather was 70% favorable for liftoff.
If the Falcon 9 rocket was not able to lift off, the launch would have been delayed to a new window on Saturday night, SpaceX said.
The company said in a statement about 10 minutes after the launch that the first stage booster of the Falcon 9 rocket had landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which is a modified barge that has a large platform that allows SpaceX to land its rocket boosters.
It was the 12th time that the booster had launched after having previously boosted eight Starlink missions, the SpaceX Demo-1 uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station, the launch of Canadian RADARSAT spacecraft and the Sirius SXM-7 satellite, the company said in a press release.
The launch came after Musk sent multiple shipments of Starlink user terminals to Ukraine to provide the country with satellite Internet access amid the Russian invasion.
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