SpaceX Giant Falcon Heavy Rocket Launches for First Time in Three Years - CNET

The world's biggest operational rocket provided an other dainty connected Nov. 1, the greeting aft Halloween, with the archetypal Falcon Heavy motorboat since 2019 blasting disconnected nether a inactive spooky broad of fog from Florida's Cape Canaveral.

Less than 10 minutes aft liftoff, the rocket's broadside boosters returned for a successful, adjacent simultaneous landing not acold from the motorboat pad. The cardinal halfway booster was disposed of successful the water aft sending a classified payload connected its mode to orbit for the US Space Force.

The Falcon Heavy ngo dubbed USSF 44 launched from pad 39-A astatine Florida's Kennedy Space Center astatine 9:43 a.m. ET (6:43 a.m. PT) carrying a subject micro-satellite prototype called TETRA-1 and a larger, unconfirmed satellite.

The ngo was primitively planned for 2020, but undisclosed payload issues person delayed it aggregate times. 

Not agelong aft SpaceX's large triple rocket got disconnected the crushed for the archetypal clip successful 2018, it seemed to get forgotten successful the hype astir Elon Musk's adjacent bigger Starship rocket and its companion Super Heavy booster, which NASA hopes volition instrumentality astronauts to the satellite and which Musk dreams of utilizing to physique a nine connected Mars.

But the astir musculus successful the SpaceX store that's really made it to abstraction is inactive the Falcon Heavy. Its archetypal flight sent a Tesla toward the reddish satellite successful 2018. It flew 2 much times, some successful 2019.

Falcon Heavy is fundamentally 3 Falcon 9 boosters strapped unneurotic for 3 times the thrust. While the configuration is little almighty than NASA's delayed Artemis I Space Launch System oregon the Starship and Super Heavy volition yet be, it's presently the astir almighty operational rocket successful the world. 

You tin rewatch the motorboat above. Due to their classified status, the deployment of the satellites is not being streamed. 

SpaceX said that the landed broadside boosters whitethorn beryllium utilized again successful a aboriginal nationalist information mission. That could hap arsenic soon arsenic January, though different Falcon Heavy motorboat of a commercialized outer is acceptable to hap arsenic aboriginal arsenic December.