From start to finish, Sunday’s Falcon Heavy launch delivered spectacular imagery - Ars Technica

Enlarge / A Falcon Heavy rocket launched astir 10 minutes aft sunset connected Sunday from Florida.

Trevor Mahlmann

The Falcon Heavy rocket made its 5th motorboat successful 5 years connected Sunday evening from Florida. However, this was the archetypal motorboat of the triple-core booster successful twilight, and this uncommon evening airy provided immoderate spectacular caller insights into the liftoff and instrumentality of the rocket.

This post-sunset lighting tin beryllium seen successful the introductory representation above, which showcases reddish hues bouncing disconnected the achromatic cores and precocious stage. That colour comes from the rocket gaining capable altitude to beryllium successful enactment of show with the Sun.

Now the second-most almighty rocket successful the satellite aft NASA's Space Launch System, the Falcon Heavy ever puts connected a large show, with its 27 Merlin engines firing astatine once. It holds the grounds for the rocket with the astir first-stage engines to scope orbit—at least, it volition until SpaceX's Starship rocket flies aboriginal this year.

Enlarge / The rocket lifted disconnected astatine 5:56 p.m. ET (22:56 UTC) connected Sunday.

Trevor Mahlmann

Sunday's motorboat was named USSF-67 and carried 2 payloads into geostationary orbit for the US Space Force. This was the 2nd Falcon Heavy motorboat for the Space Force, with different scheduled for aboriginal this spring.

This motor changeable showcases the 3 abstracted cores of the rocket, each a modified mentation of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, with its ain idiosyncratic plume.

Enlarge / Twenty-seven Merlin engines are powering the archetypal signifier of the Falcon Heavy rocket.

Trevor Mahlmann

The rocket is seen present climbing into the entity earlier booster separation, which happens astir 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the launch. After this point, the side-mounted boosters volition abstracted from the halfway center of the rocket.

Enlarge / Falcon Heavy is precocious supra the Florida coast.

Trevor Mahlmann

The halfway center past burns for an further 30 seconds earlier its kerosene and liquid oxygen propellant are expended. In the meantime, the side-mounted boosters indispensable apprehension their guardant question and reorient themselves for a instrumentality to landing zones a fewer kilometers from the motorboat site.