Tuesday saw the world’s most potent active rocket, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, launch through thick fog at Florida’s Cape Canaveral for the first time in more than three years, launching satellites for the U.S. Space Force.
Two Space Force satellites and a number of smaller satellites were among the payloads carried by the rocket system, which consisted of three Falcon 9 boosters mounted side by side. The Space Force demanded that SpaceX cease its launch live feed early without showing the deployment of its satellites since it had not provided any information about them.
According to SpaceX officials, the mission, the first Falcon Heavy launch since June 2019, had been put off for years by Space Force. In 2018, a ‘red sports car’ from Elon Musk’s other company, Tesla, was launched into space as a test payload for the rocket.
The Space Force, a division of the U.S. military established under former President Donald Trump to manage most of the Pentagon’s defence efforts in space, used the rocket for the first time on Tuesday’s mission.
Approximately three minutes after launch, the two side boosters of the Falcon Heavy rocket synchronically separated from the rocket’s core stage at an altitude of 29 kilometres (47 miles), then retracted for a supersonic free-fall toward the ground.
The two boosters, each about five stories tall, restarted their engines and nearly touched down on nearby concrete slabs moments later, to the deafening acclaim of the engineers inside SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California, headquarters, as seen on a company live broadcast.
The main launcher didn’t try to touch down; instead, it used all of its fuel to launch the satellites into orbit.
The development of Starship, a larger and entirely reusable rocket planned eventually to replace the company’s Falcon fleet, has received a lot of attention from SpaceX and its CEO Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur whose universe of high-tech enterprises now includes social media powerhouse Twitter.
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