3 years after its last launch, SpaceX successfully sent its giant Falcon Heavy rocket into orbit as part of the USSF-44 mission. The space agency led by Elon Musk has achieved another feat: that of recovering two boosters from the first stage of the rocket. The side boosters performed their synchronized landing on the planned area near the Florida coast.
It’s a big day for SpaceX. Indeed, the company that intends to send us to Mars has launched a new launch of its giant Falcon Heavy rocket. The world’s most powerful operational rocket has returned to orbit for the first time since 2019, when it was last launched.
The launch took place this Tuesday, November 1 around 2:40 p.m. Paris time from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Falcon Heavy was used to send satellites into space for the US military, as part of a mission codenamed USSF-44. For SpaceX, this launch represented a double challenge: to successfully complete the procedure, of course, but also collect the two side boosters of the rocket in the predefined landing zones.
In this way, SpaceX will be able to recover them to refurbish them and use them for other missions. For now, the company has not yet managed to bring back the three boosters (the two side ones and the central booster). It almost succeeded in 2019. The two side boosters made their synchronized landing on ground platforms, while the central booster had landed on a maritime platform. Unfortunately, violent waves caused it to fall into the sea.
SpaceX managed to recover the two Falcon Heavy boosters
For this launch, SpaceX had announced this October 14, 2022: it will simply bring back the two side boosters. “Due to the fuel consumption required for the demanding profile of the mission, SpaceX will not attempt to recover the central core,” the company said in an official statement. And good news since the side boosters made their synchronized landing without incident on the predefined zones near Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida.
Recall that the Falcon Heavy rocket made its debut with a bang in 2018. Elon Musk demonstrated the rocket’s capabilities by carrying his personal Tesla Roadster as a payload, which has since been sailing in space.
Since this test, only two Falcon Heavy missions have been launched, both in 2019. The first was to send a gigantic satellite for TV and telephony into orbit on behalf of Arabsat, a company based in Arabia saudi. As for the second, the rocket was used to ship experimental satellites for the US Department of Defense.
