Falcon Heavy | Demo (Test Flight)
Launch Successful
L - -- : -- : -- : --
Launch Window
Feb. 6, 2018, 6:30 p.m. - Feb. 6, 2018, 9 p.m.
Feb. 6, 2018, 6:30 p.m. - Feb. 6, 2018, 9 p.m.
This will be the inaugural flight of the Falcon Heavy. The test payload will be SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination: An elliptical, heliocentric orbit. Apoapsis: Around Mars' orbital distance.
The Falcon Heavy is a variant of the Falcon 9 full thrust launch vehicle and consists of a standard Falcon 9 rocket core, with two additional boosters derived from the Falcon 9 first stage.
See Falcon Details
The first stage of the Falcon 9 failed to land on the ASDS, OCISLY, stationed of the east coast. According to CEO Elon Musk the center core did not have enough ignition fluid to restart the two outer engines during its final approach to the ship. As a result, the center core was destroyed when it impacted the water at over 480kmh merely 100 meters from the droneship.
Result: B1033 did not land successfully.
The strap on booster landed successfully at Landing Zone 2 in unison with its sibling booster.
Result: Successful Return to Launch Site landing at Landing Zone 2.
The strap on booster landed successfully at Landing Zone 1 in unison with its sibling booster.
Result: Successful Return to Launch Site landing at Landing Zone 1.
Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster is an electric sports car that served as the dummy payload for the February 2018 Falcon Heavy test flight and became an artificial satellite of the Sun. "Starman", a mannequin dressed in a spacesuit, occupies the driver's seat. The car and rocket are products of Tesla and SpaceX, respectively, both companies founded by Elon Musk. The 2008-model Roadster was previously used by Musk for commuting to work, and is the only production car in space. The car, mounted on the rocket's second stage, acquired enough velocity to escape Earth's gravity and enter an elliptical heliocentric orbit crossing the orbit of Mars. The orbit reaches a maximum distance from the Sun at aphelion of 1.66 astronomical units (au). During the early portion of the voyage outside the Earth's atmosphere, live video was transmitted back to the mission control center and live-streamed for slightly over four hours.
Tesla Roadster Details
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars. SpaceX operates from many pads, on the East Coast of the US they operate from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and historic LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. They also operate from SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, usually for polar launches. Another launch site is being developed at Boca Chica, Texas.
INFO WIKI
On the fourth anniversary of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch debut and after an unusual multi-year hiatus, the world’s most powerful operational rocket...
Soyuz MS-24 carried two cosmonauts and one astronaut to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in K…
Third flight of the Firefly Alpha small sat launcher, carrying a payload for the US Department of Defense.
A batch of 21 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
Classified space situational awareness (SSA) payload for the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
3 Chinese reconnaissance satellites of unknown purposes, officially reported as for "Electromagnetic environment probing" purposes.
A batch of 22 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
Third commercial Virgin Galactic mission.
X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), formerly the X-Ray Astronomy Recovery Mission (XARM), is a replacement for the Hitomi satellite that …
The Yaogan 33-03 is a Chinese military “remote sensing” satellite of unknown purpose.
4 small satellites for LEO Internet of Things (IoT) communication purposes.
