Private aerospace company SpaceX yesterday launched a first test of their most ambitious space-flight project to date, the Falcon Heavy. After months of delays and a couple last-minute postponements due to wind on the day of the launch, the Falcon Heavy successfully made its maiden flight yesterday at 3:45 PM EST from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The most powerful rocket in the world, the Falcon Heavy is a three-booster rocket capping out at a height of 20 stories, boasting 27 engines that produce a combined 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, and which are capable of lifting close to 64 metric tons into low Earth orbit (LEO). As its payload, the rocket carried SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk's red Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) Roadster, manned by a dummy driver, into space, where it is currently in orbit through the astroid belt. The launch was streamed live by SpaceX and remains available for viewing on the company's website.
The only mistake in an otherwise flawless test of SpaceX's latest launch vehicle was the loss of the rocket's middle core.
The Falcon Heavy is touted as an innovation in reusable spaceflight technology. The vessel's two side boosters were designed to land themselves in designated landing zones, while the rocket's middle core was to land on a drone ship that would return it to land. Though the Falcon Heavy's three cores were expected to return safely to ground, only two of the rocket's three boosters were successfully landed. The two side boosters were landed within a few seconds of each other back at Kennedy Space Center, but the rocket's middle booster fell into the Atlantic Ocean after missing its landing target drone three minutes after liftoff.
The flight saw the successful launch of Elon Musk's own Tesla Roadster and its driver, Starman, a mannequin outfitted in one of SpaceX's pressure space suits, which Musk first previewed on Instagram in 2017. The choice to use Musk's Tesla Roadster, instead of another, more conventional dummy payload, was a smart, likely calculated move, given the stunning images to come out of the stunt. Once the car was in space, SpaceX hosted a live feed of Starman in the Roadster, floating above the Earth and playing David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on loop. Later, the Tesla vehicle and its cargo veered past their set course, overshooting the path that would have set them in orbit around Mars, the planned route for the test. The car and its contents instead were sent beyond Mars and entered the asteroid belt.
Musk made the launch announcement for the Falcon Heavy on January 28 via Twitter and was cautiously optimistic before the test, telling reporters, "I'll consider it a win if it just clears the pad and doesn't blow the pad to smithereens." Musk has expressed his satisfaction with the rocket's first demo. The success of the Falcon Heavy could open up new possibilities for travel to the moon and to Mars.
Donald Trump publicly congratulated the billionaire Tesla CEO and SpaceX on the launch, lauding the moment as "[continuing] to show American ingenuity at its best!" Musk was born and raised in South Africa, and attended university in Canada before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania.