The initial test flight for a Falcon Heavy lifted off on 6 February 2018, at 20:45 UTC, carrying its dummy payload, Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster, beyond Mars orbit. In July 2017, Elon Musk said, "It actually ended up being way harder to do Falcon Heavy than we thought. The integration and structural challenges of combining three Falcon 9 cores were much more difficult than expected. Ī number of factors delayed the planned maiden flight by 5 years to 2018, including two anomalies with Falcon 9 launch vehicles, which required all engineering resources to be dedicated to failure analysis, halting flight operations for many months. news conference in April 2011, with initial test flight expected in 2013. SpaceX unveiled the plan for the Falcon Heavy to the public at a Washington, D.C. The concept for three core booster stages of the company's as-yet-unflown Falcon 9 was referred to in 2005 as the Falcon 9 Heavy. SpaceX breaking ground at Vandenberg Air Force Base, SLC-4E in June 2011 for the Falcon Heavy launch pad.Ĭoncepts for a Falcon Heavy launch vehicle using three Falcon 1 core boosters were initially discussed as early as 2003. Both Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 will eventually be superseded by the in-development Starship launch system. įalcon Heavy was designed to be able to carry humans into space beyond low Earth orbit, although as of February 2018, SpaceX has confirmed that they will not transport people on Falcon Heavy, nor pursue the human-rating certification process to transport NASA astronauts. Since then, Falcon Heavy has been certified for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. The third Falcon Heavy launch successfully occurred on 25 June 2019. The second Falcon Heavy launch occurred on 11 April 2019 and all three booster rockets successfully returned to Earth. The rocket carried a Tesla Roadster belonging to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, with a dummy dubbed "Starman" in the driver's seat, as a dummy payload. SpaceX conducted Falcon Heavy's maiden launch on 6 February 2018, at 20:45 UTC. Falcon Heavy has the highest payload capacity of any currently operational launch vehicle, and the third-highest capacity of any rocket ever to reach orbit, trailing the Saturn V and Energia. It is derived from the Falcon 9 vehicle and consists of a strengthened Falcon 9 first stage as the center core with two additional Falcon 9-like first stages as strap-on boosters.
Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured by SpaceX.
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