SpaceX launches Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket, on Space Force mission

Elon Musk's SpaceX connected Tuesday launched the archetypal Falcon Heavy ngo successful implicit 3 years, a towering rocket that is the astir almighty presently successful operation.

SpaceX's rocket is carrying the classified USSF-44 ngo for the U.S. Space Force, which is besides the archetypal operational nationalist information ngo for Falcon Heavy. Its astir caller erstwhile motorboat was the Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) ngo successful June 2019, which carried experimental satellites connected a objection formation for the Pentagon.

The ngo took disconnected astatine 9:41 a.m. ET from a launchpad astatine NASA's Kennedy Space Center successful Florida.

While Falcon Heavy's basal is reusable, the institution landed conscionable the broadside brace of the 3 rocket boosters – with the cardinal halfway dropping into the water similar accepted rockets do, to conscionable the Space Force's high-performance request for this mission.

The hiatus successful Falcon Heavy launches — the institution has completed 3 since the rocket's debut successful February 2018 — is mostly owed to the readiness of customers connected its schedule.

This USSF-44 ngo was primitively scheduled for precocious 2020, and 2 different Falcon Heavy missions scheduled for this year, different for the Space Force and the different for NASA, person lawsuit payloads that are besides not acceptable yet. There's a backlog of astir a twelve missions for Falcon Heavy inactive to come.

SpaceX continues to motorboat its Falcon bid of rockets astatine a precocious rate, with Tuesday's ngo marking the company's grounds 50th motorboat this year. But the institution astatine the aforesaid clip continues enactment connected the adjacent larger Starship rockets it hopes volition regenerate them.