SpaceX successfully launches Falcon Heavy

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy successfully launched on its inaugural flight here Feb. 6, placing a demonstration payload into orbit and boosting the company's interplanetary ambitions.
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            KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — A SpaceX Falcon Heavy successfully launched on its inaugural flight here Feb. 6, placing a demonstration payload into orbit and boosting the company’s interplanetary ambitions.
The Falcon Heavy lifted off at 3:45 p.m. Eastern from Launch Complex 39A here, after more than two hours of delays due to high upper-level winds. The two side boosters landed at pads designated Landing Zone 1 and 2 at the former Launch Complex 13 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The center core landed on a drone ship downrange, but the status of that booster was not immediately known.
The second stage entered orbit as planned eight and a half minutes after liftoff. A final burn, scheduled for about six hours later, will place the payload, a modified Tesla Roadster electric sports car, into a heliocentric orbit between the orbits of the Earth and Mars.
Two of Falcon Heavy’s three core stages make a synchronized landing. The third core stage was programmed to land on a droneship at sea. Credit: SpaceX via Twitter.
The launch is a long time in coming for SpaceX. At an April 2011 press conference, Musk said the vehicle would be ready for a first launch in 2013. Development difficulties, as well as higher priority given to the company’s Falcon 9 vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, delayed the vehicle’s first flight by several years.
During those delays, the launch market has evolved. Improvements in the performance of the Falcon 9 now allow it to launch large commercial communications that would have previously required the Falcon Heavy. Demand for such satellites has also dropped in recent years, based on declining numbers of orders of such satellites, as commercial operators weigh the effect proposed satellite constellations, as well as smaller satellites, have on their plans.
One potential market SpaceX may be targeting for Falcon Heavy is the launch of large national security payloads. The six-hour coast of the second stage after orbit insertion will simulate a mission to insert a payload directly into geostationary orbit, Musk said in a teleconference with reporters Feb. 5. Such trajectories are used for some Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office payloads.
Falcon Heavy climbs to orbit during its Feb. 6 debut. Credit: Craig Vander Galien for SpaceNews
Falcon Heavy is designed to place up to 64 metric tons into low Earth orbit and 26.7 metric tons into geostationary transfer orbit. Those figures, Musk said, assume using booster core based on the upgraded Block 5 version of the Falcon 9, whose first flight is later this year. This demonstration launch used older versions of the booster core with somewhat less performance.
The payload for this demonstration flight is Musk’s own red Tesla Roadster, an unconventional choice that has attracted attention and some criticism. A mannequin wearing a spacesuit like that SpaceX has designed for its commercial crew program is sitting in the driver’s seat of the car.
The car should be in its heliocentric orbit for several hundred million years, Musk estimated, making multiple close passes to Mars. The car is equipped with three cameras, in addition to a large number of sensors on the upper stage. “The most fun still will be the three cameras that are mounted in the roadster,” he said Feb. 5. “They really should provide some epic views if they work and everything goes well.”
Musk, in comments before the launch, said the company was not focused on using Falcon Heavy for crewed missions, including sending a Crew Dragon carrying two people around the moon, a mission the company announced less than a year ago, as the company focuses instead on development of the next-generation, and much larger, BFR reusable launch vehicle. However, Musk said the company could revisit that decision should Falcon Heavy suffer delays.

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