SpaceX Successfully Launches its First Falcon Heavy in 40 Months
takyon writes (pre-launch):
SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket rolls to pad for Tuesday launch, dual booster landing
Falcon Heavy was successfully tested on February 6, 2018, launched Arabsat-6A on April 11, 2019, and launched 24 small satellites for the U.S. Air Force on June 25, 2019, including LightSail 2. Two more Falcon Heavy launches are planned for January, with as many as five Falcon Heavy launch attempts possible during 2023.
SpaceX Successfully Launches its First Falcon Heavy in 40 Monthsupstart writes:
SpaceX successfully launches its first Falcon Heavy in 40 months:
A dense fog shrouded much of Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday morning, largely obscuring the liftoff of the most powerful operational rocket in the world.
But takeoff the Falcon Heavy did, promptly at 9:41 am ET, climbing steadily above the Florida coast on its way to orbit. A few minutes into the launch, two side-mounted boosters-slightly modified versions of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket-peeled away from the center core of the rocket.
As that center core continued to climb toward orbit, the boosters fell back to Earth, burning a subset of their nine engines twice and making a picture-perfect side-by-side landing just a few kilometers away from where they launched from. SpaceX will now refurbish these side boosters for reuse on the military's next Falcon Heavy mission, USSF-67, in January. The center core was not recovered.
This was just the fourth launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, and the first stage did its job, delivering the upper stage and two payloads for the US Space Force into orbit. The upper stage Merlin vacuum engine will now perform two burns before injecting the classified payloads directly into geostationary orbit later on Tuesday.
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