Between Storms, SpaceX Launches GPS III-7 Aboard Falcon 9

It was a typical summer’s day here on the Space Coast: at first, sunny and warm, humid with an ever-present threat of a thunderstorm lingering off in the distance.

An hour and a half before today’s launch, while the countdown clock was ticking towards T-0, the skies made good on their threat of a thunderstorm, with plenty of lightning strikes and heavy showers near Space Launch Complex 40, where the GPS III-7 satellite, also known as SV-08, waited atop Falcon 9 for liftoff just before the end of the launch window at 1:38 PM Eastern Time.