The weather was clear and cruise ships avoided the no-go zone as SpaceX finally sent a Falcon 9 rocket up from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Monday.

The 6:11 p.m. liftoff came after four days of delay, first from weather, but then from a late scrub because of a cruise ship sailing out of Port Canaveral venturing into the larger-than-normal danger zone for rocket liftoffs because of a planned southerly trajectory.

SpaceX sent the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2 satellite run by the Italian Space Agency into orbit. It’s the second of four new satellites to replace an original four launched from 2007-2010 that provide defense, environmental and other observations for Italy and surrounding nations in the Mediterranean region.

It’s the fourth launch from SpaceX from the Space Coast in January with a fifth on tap from neighboring Kennedy Space Center now set for Wednesay.

The company successfully recovered its first-stage booster at Canaveral’s Landing Zone 1, the 104th time SpaceX was able to recover one of its boosters. This was the third flight of the booster while both fairing halves have flown on three previous missions each.

Several of the launches from Canaveral and Kennedy have had the southerly trajectory, which prompted Space Launch Delta 45, the Space Force group that oversees both Cape Canaveral and Patrick Space Force Base, to try and spread the word so that aircraft and watercraft don’t impinge on the space.

“The 2022 launch pace is going to be exceptionally busy,” said Maj. Jonathan Szul, Director of Operations, 1st Range Operations Squadron at CCSFS in early January. “Due to the unique southerly trajectories, there will be a larger potential impact to air and sea traffic along the southeast coast of Florida. We ask that all pilots and mariners double-check their Notices to Airmen (NOTAM) and Notices to Mariners (NOTMAR) to ensure they are fully aware of all pending launch activities in this historic month on the Space Coast.”

A glance at cruisemapper.com showed five cruise ships docked at Port Canaveral as of 2 p.m. The ships were able to depart and not venture into safe territory before the launch. The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that it was Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas, which was south of Port Canaveral in the Atlantic off the coast of Melbourne that was the source of Sunday’s encroachment.

The second Falcon 9 rocket, which was originally on tap for this weekend but has also suffered from a domino effect, is now aiming for a Wednesday launch, with an 80% for good weather, according to Space Launch Delta 45′s Weather Squadron. This one carrying another batch of Starlink satellites will take off from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A, with a target liftoff between 4:11 p.m. and 5:01 p.m.

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