On Monday, after standing down for a month, SpaceX returned to flight from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Mostly sunny deep-blue skies provided a perfect opportunity to photograph the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket. And armed with four remote cameras, Trevor Mahlmann was there for Ars to capture the scene.

The photo galleries in this post showcase the Falcon 9 rocket in flight from launch, into MaxQ, and through the first stage's return to Landing Zone 1 on the Florida coast. When he checked his remotes, Mahlmann found a few surprises—including a few birds other than the Falcon taking a flight of their own during the launch.

The launch itself went flawlessly for SpaceX, and now the Dragon spacecraft is flying toward the International Space Station. The Dragon vehicle and its three tons of cargo, including a large number of new science experiments, will dock with the station on Wednesday.

As for SpaceX, after waiting a month for maintenance along the Eastern Range, the company will now commence another busy period of launches. As early as August 24, a Falcon 9 will launch the Formosat-5 satellite for Taiwan's space agency from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Then, SpaceX is likely to be back in action at Cape Canaveral in early September, with its first launch of the US military’s X-37B spaceplane.

Listing image by Trevor Mahlmann