On the eve of the country’s Independence Day, those who chose to stay up, get up early, or were already on their way were treated to quite a spectacle. After a bright flash of light lit up the pre-dawn sky Wednesday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off, followed by its booster landing—visible as it touched down over the Atlantic Ocean.
The visible booster shooting out of the sky like a celestial star was not something many were expecting. Visible from across the Space Coast, the Falcon 9’s vapor left a colorful glow as the sun began to peak over the horizon—early morning sunlight illuminating the booster’s landing path.
Florida is one of the few places where both fireworks and rockets grace the sky.
The rocket’s second stage, blasting off from Space Launch Complex 40, carried the latest batch of 20 Starlink internet satellites into orbit. This time, 13 of those satellites will feature Direct to Cell capabilities, which will provide mobile Starlink service to customers.
SpaceX had already adjusted the launch time three times before the rocket took flight. No reason was given for the delay, but radar did show some weather activity over the Atlantic Ocean.
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Just over eight minutes into the flight, the first stage of the Falcon 9 booster made a visible, controlled landing on the A lack of gravitas drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, which will be sailed back to Port Canaveral in the coming days.
That landing trail, rarely seen during drone landings, remained illuminated by the morning light for more than an hour, creating a colorful patch of sky that included a crescent moon and Jupiter.
According to SpaceX, this was the Falcon 9’s 16th flight, having previously flown 10 Starlink missions, SES-22, ispace’s HAKUTO-R MISSION 1, Amazonas-6, CRS-27 and Bandwagon-1. None of these previous flights were crewed missions.
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On July 2, NASA released a statement announcing that SpaceX had been selected to conduct the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) mission.
This new mission, scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 no earlier than August 2027, will observe the universe in search of answers to the mysteries of matter, antimatter and the later part of the life cycle of stars. The compact Compton Space Telescope will do this by observing gamma rays, which are the smallest and therefore one of the most difficult wavelengths to detect.
Brooke Edwards is a space reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at bedwards@floridatoday.com or at X: @brookeofstars.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: SpaceX rocket launch brings early sunrise over Florida’s Space Coast
