Falcon Heavy, world's most powerful rocket, launches – as it happened

A heavy-duty rocket from Elon Musk's private company launches for the first time and aims to make spaceflight cheaper and easier

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10.33pm GMT

We're going to close our live coverage of the historic Falcon Heavy launch with a summary of the afternoon's events.

Related: Falcon Heavy: SpaceX's giant rocket launches successfully

Related: Sign up for Lab Notes - the Guardian's weekly science update

10.12pm GMT

The car continues its surreal path around the planet, somewhere distant above an entire continent.

Still no word from Musk or SpaceX about what happened to the core rocket booster, however. Their long silence suggests it did not land as planned on a ship in the Atlantic, but likely crashed into the sea.

Currently over Australia pic.twitter.com/HAya3E6OEJ