A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched on Sunday carrying a record number of satellites, the company said.
The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 10:00 a.m. (3:00 p.m. GMT), 24 hours after the originally scheduled date for its flight which was postponed due to bad weather.
Andy Tran, a SpaceX official, said in a video accompanying the launch that Falcon 9 was carrying 133 commercial and government satellites as well as 10 SpaceX satellites.
“The largest number”
of satellites
“ever deployed in a single mission,”
he added.
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SpaceX flies Falcon 9 as part of a "rideshare" program under which smaller companies pay Elon Musk's group to carry their technology into space.
In a series of tweets, SpaceX said all 143 satellites had been deployed.
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The company founded by Elon Musk wants to put thousands of small satellites into orbit to form the constellation dubbed "Starlink", which is to provide high-speed internet from space.
Scientists have expressed concern over the number of objects orbiting Earth.
SpaceX says its satellites are designed to burn in the atmosphere after a few years.