File Photo: The photo made available by U.S. space firm SpaceX on March 30, 2017 shows the company's Falcon 9 rocket launches at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the United States. (Xinhua)

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- U.S. private spaceflight company SpaceX Monday launched a rocket from California, carrying 10 communications satellites into orbit for Iridium Communications, an American company providing satellite communications.

The Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from the Vandenberg Air Force Base at 5:37 a.m. PDT (1237 GMT) and about 7.5 minutes later, successfully first stage landed on SpaceX's drone ship "Just Read the Instructions" stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

Cheers and applause broke out in the SpaceX control room as the launch was streamed live online.

"Today's mission represents our 15 Falcon 9 launches of the year," John Insprucker, Falcon 9's principal integration engineer, said in a webcast.

Deployment of the 10 Iridium NEXT satellites began about 58 minutes after the launch and ended at 6:50 a.m. PDT (1350 GMT).

"We're 10 for 10!" Insprucker said. "A clean sweep of Iridium NEXT satellite deployment in the desired final orbit."

"Successful deployment of 10 @IridiumComm NEXT satellites to low-Earth orbit confirmed," SpaceX then tweeted.

This is the third of eight scheduled SpaceX launches for the Iridium NEXT constellation, and will bring the total number of satellites in orbit to 30.

The first launch occurred in January this year, followed by the second one on June 25.

Iridium is the only mobile voice and data satellite communications network that spans the entire globe. The company said it is on track to fully replace the world's largest commercial satellite network of low-earth orbit satellites in what will be one of the largest "tech upgrades" in history.

Iridium has partnered with Franco-Italian Thales Alenia Space for the manufacturing, assembly and testing of 81 Iridium NEXT satellites, 75 of which will be launched by SpaceX.

These 75 satellites are scheduled to be deployed by mid-2018. The process of replacing the satellites one by one in a constellation of this size and scale has never been undertaken before.

The next generation global satellite constellation will provide coverage over Earth's entire surface, including across oceans, airways and polar regions.

"It has been a great morning," Insprucker said.