Overview
- Falcon heavy is launched by SpaceX, a US space flight company, on 6 February 2018.
- It is the most powerful rocket in the world, which carries cars into space.
- From Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States, the falcon heavy took off.
- SpaceX not only guided the take-off of the falcon heavy but also it was surprising that they managed two of the falcon heavy’s first-stage rockets to land back on the earth straight. They landed in unison at a Kennedy Space Centre landing pad.
- It carried a red Tesla Roadster car which belongs to SpaceX and the Tesla founder Elon Musk into space.
- The car was outfitted with a mannequin dressed in a spacesuit, a high-data storage unit containing Isaac Asimov’s science fiction book series, the Foundation Trilogy, and a plaque bearing the names of 6000 SpaceX employees.
- It is efficient in generating more than 5 million pounds of thrust at lift-off, with a total of 27 merlin engines.
- A total weight of 64 tons can be lifted by the rocket into orbit and that too at a very low cost of about USD 90 million per launch.
- The first stage of falcon heavy is made from three cores or boosters. The side boosters are connected to the center of the core at its base and the vehicle’s interstage.
- Both of the two side boosters are flight tested.
- The second stage of Falcon Heavy will attempt to place the Roadster car into a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun.
- Initially, it was designed to restore the possibility of sending humans to the Moon or Mars, but now Falcon Heavy is being considered mainly as a potential equipment carrier for deep-space destinations.
