The Hawthorne, Calif.-based private spaceflight company is scheduled to launch an improved version of its Falcon 9 rocket from a newly rebuilt pad at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base on Saturday (Sept. 14).

 

The flight will loft Canada's Cassiope space weather satellite, as well as several secondary payloads, into orbit. But its primary purpose is to break in the new Falcon 9 version 1.1, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said recently. [The Rockets and Spaceships of SpaceX]

 

 

"This is essentially a development flight for the rocket," Musk told SpaceNews. "It's not an operational flight."