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It's off! SpaceX launches rocket from Central Coast with payload of communications satellites

A view of the body of a rocket toward the burners, with the Earth in the background.
SpaceX
The view back at Earth from a Falcon 9 rocket that lifted off from the Central Coast on Friday morning.

Low clouds and fog obscured the Friday morning launch for parts of the region.

Most people couldn't see it because of low clouds and fog, but some in the region heard an early morning rocket launch from the Central Coast Friday morning.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 6:43 a.m. It carried a payload of 26 communications satellites into orbit.

They are the latest additions to the Starlink network, which provides internet and cell phone service to underserved areas of the world. More than 7,000 satellites are now in orbit.

The reusable first-stage booster landed on a barge off the West Coast.

Lance Orozco has been News Director of KCLU since 2001, providing award-winning coverage of some of the biggest news events in the region, including the Thomas and Woolsey brush fires, the deadly Montecito debris flow, the Borderline Bar and Grill attack, and Ronald Reagan's funeral.