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  A Falcon 9 rocket is ready to go on Friday ahead of an evening launch attempt. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann for Ars ]

SpaceX has a big launch on tap for this evening, delivering a valuable satellite into orbit for the US Space Force. With a liftoff time of 9:43pm ET (01:43 UTC Saturday), the company's Falcon 9 rocket is due to deliver a fourth GPS III satellite into geostationary transfer orbit. Weather conditions look good, with a 70-percent chance of "go" conditions.

Built by Lockheed Martin, the GPS III satellites were designed to modernize the current Global Positioning System constellation, providing three-times greater accuracy and improved anti-jamming capabilities. This mission will launch on a new Falcon 9 first stage, but SpaceX and the Space Force have reached an agreement that will allow future GPS missions to launch on flight-proven rockets.

While the payload is important, perhaps more intriguing this evening in Florida will be whether this mission actually gets off the launch pad. The last week has seen a succession of US launch attempts canceled for issues primarily related to ground systems.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

In recent months, Tesla skeptics have argued that the company's growth had stalled. After delivering a record-breaking 83,500 vehicles in the third quarter of 2018, the company's deliveries grew only modestly in the next few quarters: 97,000 in the third quarter of 2019, for example, and 90,650 in the second quarter of 2020.

But Tesla's Q3 2020 numbers, released Friday morning, put those concerns to rest. Tesla says it shipped 139,300 vehicles in the third quarter of 2020. That's up 53 percent from last quarter and up 45 percent from a year earlier. It's also up 24 percent from Tesla's previous best quarter—the fourth quarter of 2019.

The number slightly exceeded the consensus forecast of Wall Street analysts, but Tesla's stock still fell about 3 percent in Friday morning trading.