One of the company's Falcon 9 rockets lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Tuesday (March 10) at 12:19 a.m. EDT (0419 GMT), carrying the 15,000-pound (6,800-kilogram) EchoStar XXV TV satellite skyward.
The Falcon 9's first stage, a vehicle known as Booster 1085, came back to Earth nearly nine minutes later as planned, touching down in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas.
The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued carrying EchoStar XXV to distant geosynchronous transfer orbit, where the satellite was deployed on schedule 35 minutes after liftoff.
