Falcon Heavy rocket, carrying only one passenger, captured the attention of the world when it launched its test flight to orbit close to Mars on Tuesday. It is world’s first most powerful rocket ever tested. Company CEO Mr. Elon Musk’s Red Tesla Roadster was its passenger.
During its test flight, it fired 27 engines and thundered to the sky from NASA Pad39A Launchpad. It is the same location at which Apollo 11 was launched on way to moon.
Thousands of people witnessed this historical moment at Cape Canaveral, Florida. During launch it can generate more than 05 million pounds of thrust. With such powerful engine, this 70 meters tall rocket can carry 140,000 pounds of cargo into earth orbit. It can send spacecraft to the moon surface. It is basically composed of three small Falcon 9 rockets which are stripped together.
The car was equipped with high data storage unit and three huge cameras. Two out of its three boosters detached after two minutes and made their way back to earth landing upright down successfully.
The third booster was programmed to land on the ocean platform at company’s autonomous drone ship, but it failed to land on platform rather it hit the water about 300 feet away from drone ship. According to Musk, it was enough to recover two out of three boosters.
According to SpaceX, if everything goes right and roadster survives, it would enter in Earth-Mars orbit around the sun. This journey could continue for billions of years.
SpaceX has already signed two contracts in 2018. One is Saudi Arabia’s large communication satellite and another is test payload for US military.
“The great thing about Falcon heavy is that it opens up a new class of payload,” Musk said. “It could launch one more than twice as much payload as any other rocket in the world, so it’s up to customers what they might want to launch. But it can launch things direct to Pluto and beyond. No stop needed.”
So what’s next! According to experts, if this launch goes successful, NASA would consider Falcon Heavy to launch it to reach Moon first time since 1972. Currently it is used as equipment carrier deep to the space.
“WE WANT A NEW SPACE RACE. RACES ARE EXCITING.”
SpaceX has many exciting plans for the next few years. It plans to launch more and more rockets at least one per month, plans to flying humans to the moon, further increasing its developments to test next Big Falcon Rocket (BFR).