Liftoff!

--Greg

Orbit reached!

Outstanding. I'm always a bundle of nerves watching these things, but that was spectacular.

Congratulations Elan and team!

There will be another second-stage burn to circularize the orbit, and then they still have to release the payload, so it's not quite done yet, but I can't find anything to indicate when those operations will take place. Still, it WAS beautiful, wasn't it? And very nice to see them make it happen twice in a row.

--Greg

Edit: Spaceflightnow.com says both the second burn and the deployment will be about one hour after liftoff.

She ran sweet and true. Now for the circularization burn & SV separation!

EDIT: Per Spaceflightnow.com, 2nd stage burn complete, SV separation successful. VERY well done, SpaceX!!!

Okay, separation confirmed. Looks like SpaceX has its first happy customer. :-)

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon/005/status.html

--Greg

I got one ISS pass. One STS scrub, no STS/ET flyover, SpaceX webcase gave no hint of actually starting, second ISS flyover was clouded out. So I went to bed.

VERY pleased for SpaceX

I tried to get some sleep inbetween launch time shuffles, but basically ended up up all night. Was not pleased with the way they withheld every bit of information until the webcast finally started so everyone was in the dark about the delays. Still, it was worth it in the end - the last bits of good footage before SECO-1 with the solar lens flare and nicely exposed Earth were quite nice, though that wobble really made me uneasy.

Still waiting on orbital parameters, reportedly they "nailed it", but solid numbers are solid numbers. The satellite also appears to be healthy.

Not an official video - but quite a good screen-grab-of-stream-to-youtube of the launch - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfdk_VZMjQI

Note the raindrops on the ground camera - you should have seen the sky 30 minutes before that, dark grey and a rain shower lasting some 10 minutes came out practically out of nowhere, within minutes.

Congratulations SpaceX! Very, very glad to see it went well...