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The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is the only commercial rocket launch where the first stage is landed around 6 minutes after launch.
In this shot I have captured the ascent profile from Pad 39a at Kennedy Space Centre and also the first stage decent onto LZ1 at Canaveral AFB, Florida
All captured on the GoPro Hero5 Black
A full-size test article of a SpaceX Crew Dragon fires its eight SuperDraco engines in a development test of its ability to land with the accuracy of a helicopter using only the thrusters. The company conducted two tethered tests vehicle attached to a crane so engineers could refine the landing software and systems on the spacecraft. SpaceX envisions returning people to Earth from space on the power of thrust instead of beneath parachutes. SpaceX, in partnership with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, is developing the Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 integrated system to take astronauts to launch astronauts to the International Space Station from the United States. Photo credit: SpaceX
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One Falcon 9 streaks to space for the 20th and final time, while another Falcon 9 stands in Port Canaveral waiting to fly again (look for the green light).
At 8:34pm Saturday, SpaceX sent the European Commissionâs Galileo L12 mission to orbit.
I'm sorry, but, I'm not sorry.
The Press Site flag + countdown clock + rocket (!) combination is just too good to not turn into a Tiny Earth photo.
So, may I present the #KoreaSat5A #SpaceX #Falcon9, in Tiny Earth form.
At 3:34 pm on Monday, 10/30/17 #SpaceX successfully launched the #KoreaSat5A satellite atop a #Falcon9 rocket and, a few moments later, landed the first stage of the Falcon aboard the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship about 400 miles out in the Atlantic.
This is the view from the Kennedy Space Center Press Site, with the countdown clock and the SpaceX webcast visible to the right.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.
Free to use under Creative Commons License with attribution to "Daniel Oberhaus (2018)"
Photos taken during the early morning of Monday, October 30, 2017 during remote camera setup. The KoreaSat5A payload is set to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket today (October 30, 2017); the launch window opens at 3:34pm (ET) (Photos by Michael Seeley / We Report Space)
Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich mission. Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) - Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA.
On Thursday, August 4 at 7:08 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched KPLO to a ballistic lunar transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
WARNING: Long caption and preposterous image ahead. Milky Way/Astrophotography purists should probably turn around now.
I spent a lot of time leading up to the #Telkom4 #SpaceX launch laboring over how to do something visually unique. I'm incredibly fortunate to have a fantastic vantage point for the launches, the ITL Causeway at 45th Space Wing at Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., but, particularly lately, launch streak pics shot off-base have been stealing the show. For the last two or three launches I didn't set remote cameras, so my only shot at a view of the rockets is from the causeway, so, resigned to the "usual" streak shot, the causeway was again where I went.
I made the right choice.
The view of the night sky was truly spectacular, so much so that you could make out the Milky Way (faintly, mind you) with the naked eye, wrapping directly overhead. After I set up the time-lapse for the star trail shot, I pointed another camera toward the south (and the Milky Way, left of this frame) for a long exposure, and voila, there it was, even with a considerable amount of light pollution from the Port and points south. Without even knowing what I was going to do with the images, I then panned up, straight up, and the rotated the camera 180 degrees toward the North and then panned down, for five shots total. Naturally, the north-facing shots captured the Falcon9 rocket sitting on the pad (and more light pollution from the xenon lights at the pad), along with Jacques V Oene, setting up his cameras (right of this frame). Later, I simply fed these images into Photoshop and asked for a photo merge, and this is what it produced, and quickly, I might add. It's far from the perfect merge, and the more I look at it, the more I can see the seams between the frames, but I'm presenting it as it arrived. And, to make this Frankenstein of an "Inception" type of image complete, I (of course, right?) added the launch streak to the frame for perspective or something. Or, just because I could.
While I realize this image is over the top (a Velvet Elvis of a picture, as Jared would say, or rather, has said), and shouldn't be viewed as a sky atlas, it only slightly captures the majesty of what we get to witness here on the Space Coast. And for this (and every) launch, it's fun to be surrounded by people who also see this beauty for what it is: genuinely magical. (MaryLiz Bender and Ryan Chylinski even brought a telescope with them for stargazing while we waited for the launch -- how cool is that?)
TL;DR: The night sky is beautiful, and I may or may not have gotten carried away with this freak show of a photo merge and composite.
Details:
Sky photos were shot at 15-secs, ISO2500 and f2.8 and then the launch streak was shot at 191-secs, ISO100 and f18, all with a Canon 5D4 and a 16-35mm lens.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Kennedy Space Center on March 31, 2025, carrying the Crew Dragon Resilience and four astronauts—Commander Chun Wang, Vehicle Commander Jannicke Mikkelsen, Mission Pilot Rabea Rogge, and Mission Medical Officer Eric Philips—on the historic Fram2 mission, the first human spaceflight to orbit both Earth's poles.
Pictures of the launch and landing of the #CRS12 #Falcon9 rocket carrying a Dragon capsule of #ISSCargo to the International Space Station, seen from the roof of the Vehicle Assembly Building. The successful launch (and landing) took place at 12:31pm (ET) on August 14, 2017 from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. (Pictures by Michael Seeley / We Report Space)
SpaceX performing a Propulsive Descent Landing with their Dragon capsule at the SpaceX Test Facility in McGregor, Texas
August 29, 2025 - SpaceX Rocket Launch at 8:58 PM at Point Vicente Lighthouse in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA. Photo Shoot with Mario Duque and Cindy Wu.
The rocket's booster stage reportedly landed on a ship nine minutes after the reported 6:14 PM launch from Vandenberg AFB.
After adjusting for errors in my camera's clock, I find this image was taken at 6:17 PM corrected local time in California, which coincides with the beginning of the 1st stage's controlled descent three minutes after launch, so perhaps that's what I captured here, although I can't explain why there appear to be 3 objects that have separated from the 2nd stage.
When it first came into view here, the rocket was west of Los Angeles, about 100 miles downrange from Vandenberg and seemingly flying in a SSE direction.
www.space.com/spacex-starlink-group-4-31-launch
I'd heard the launch announcement on the news, so I quickly walked outside with my camera loaded for bear, or spaceships. The crescent moon dominated the twilight sky, and I got a couple good shots before the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket appeared as a bright streak in the WNW sky, not looking immediately different from an approaching jet, but the vapor trail soon grew in size, and I realized I was seeing the spaceship, which then flew across the western sky toward the S over the next couple of minutes before it was lost behind some trees.
The big Sigma 100-400 zoom proved up to the challenge, reliably focusing on the rocket's hot exhaust, which for focus if not composition I kept centered, and so this image has been cropped.
Falcon 9 launch of 46 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Space Launch Complex 4 East. As seen from San Luis Obispo, CA.
The sound of a rocket launch is unlike anything you've ever heard-- you can actually hear the rocket after it is gone from sight.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Kennedy Space Center on March 31, 2025, carrying the Crew Dragon Resilience and four astronauts—Commander Chun Wang, Vehicle Commander Jannicke Mikkelsen, Mission Pilot Rabea Rogge, and Mission Medical Officer Eric Philips—on the historic Fram2 mission, the first human spaceflight to orbit both Earth's poles.
My first photograph featured on APOD!!!
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181012.html
Prints and stuff available on RedBubble
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When I heard there was going to be a rocket landing attempt in Vandenberg I got really excited, because I've watched a handful of SpaceX launch streams and I'm still in awe of the technological issues overcame to get to this point. I'd only seen a couple rocket launches in person, and the closest I'd ever been was an Atlas IV (I think?) launch at Canaveral but I was probably 8ish years old, so I don't remember it too well. More recently I've seen a couple ULA launches out of Vandenberg, but only from Goleta, many miles from the base. For this launch, we took two cars full of grad students on the hour-long drive up to Vandenberg and got as close as we could to the launch, joining the massive line of cars on Ocean Avenue before the road was closed closer to the beach. It reminded me of solar eclipse traffic last year - massive turnout for a cool scientific event!
Although I was scrambling to change lenses two minutes before the launch due to the rapidly changing lighting conditions, I ended up what I thought was "stuck" with only my telephoto attached, meaning that when this beautiful plume showed up, I could only take pictures of it way zoomed in. I wasn't about to look away from the incredible sights long enough to install a wide angle and find a lens cap! As it turns out, this 88 mm equivalent field of view shows some awesome detail, both in the clouds generated by the exhaust, and in the pulses of the gas thrusters on the Falcon first stage!
This picture was taken during the Falcon 9 stage-separation, where the first stage comes back to land and the second stage accelerates into orbit carrying a lot less mass. This picture was taken from about three miles north of the launch site, so with the rocket headed roughly south, multiple aspects of the flight could be captured at once. The red smoke to the right is from the initial ascent, lit by twilight only, and is only a few miles away. The large plume of blue and orange is the result of stage separation and the first stage's "boostback" burn well downrange of the pad. This event occurred at a much higher altitude, and was actually sunlit, despite it being nighttime on the ground. The upside-down "V" of jets at the top of the image is a series of short correction pulses from the first stage's cold gas thrusters orienting the stage for the return to the pad. The bright spot in the lower part of the image is the second stage accelerating to orbital velocity, now very far downrange and headed directly away from the camera.
As we watched this unfold, I heard an elementary-aged student standing at a nearby car say "Wow, it looks like a planetary nebula!" Aside from being a heartwarming reminder of the inspirational power of spaceflight, he was very literally close to the truth. Nebulas are just clouds of gas and dust expanding in near-vacuum and lit by a nearby star. If you bend the definition a bit, that's exactly what we saw above southern California this weekend! It makes sense that we see the same filamentary structures - it's just that the gas and dust in this case were the result of burning kerosene instead of the leftovers from star formation...
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket at 5:37 a.m. PDT, on 10-09-2017, from SLC-4 on Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
The first test article of a SpaceX Crew Dragon undergoes structural load testing to demonstrate the spacecraft’s ability to withstand the tremendous forces it’s exposed to during space flight. The backbone of Crew Dagon is a metallic welded pressure vessel. SpaceX has completed manufacturing of the first two pressure vessels to be used for ground testing, and is currently manufacturing two Crew Dragon flight articles. Photo credit: SpaceX
The SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket comes to life for the first time as its main engines are fired at launch pad 39A.
June 23, 2024 - Summer is starting off with a blast from SpaceX! I watched and photographed this SpaceX Launch from my Home in Long Beach, CA with my family. I enjoyed hearing their excited reactions to this Rocket Launch!
L'entraînement continue chez SpaceX... pas encore de scaphandres (sur mesure), mais ça n'empêche pas de passer beaucoup de temps au simulateur pour apprivoiser le Dragon, répéter les scenarii nominaux...
Aki looking like a boss, couldn't be happier to share a ride to space with these guys.
Credits: SpaceX
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While you were sleeping (probably): At 1:33am (ET) Thursday, NASA's PACE satellite mission successfully launched into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
This was the cloudy view of the launch (a polar trajectory) and booster landing, seen from Palm Shores, FL in a 440-sec exposure.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule stand poised for launch at complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. Launch time is currently scheduled for tomorrow at 4:55am. If successful, this will be the first time a commercial vehicle has flown the International Space Station.