SpaceX’s Powerful Falcon Heavy Rocket Set for Launch After Three-Year Break – CNET

The world’s biggest operational rocket has an extra treat for us on Nov. 1, the morning after Halloween: Falcon Heavy is set to launch for the first time since 2019.

Not long after SpaceX’s big triple rocket got off the ground for the first time in 2018, it seemed to get forgotten in the hype around Elon Musk’s even bigger Starship rocket. Now ol’ Heavy is ready to send a pair of payloads into orbit for the US Space Force.

Lately when we talk about a “big SpaceX rocket,” we’re probably referring to Starship and its companion Super Heavy booster, which NASA hopes will return astronauts to the moon and which Musk dreams of using to build a society on Mars.

But the most muscle in the SpaceX garage that’s actually made it to space is still the Falcon Heavy. Its first flight sent a Tesla toward the red planet in 2018. It flew two more times, both in 2019.

The Falcon Heavy mission dubbed USSF 44 is the next launch on deck for pad 39-A at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, currently set for Nov. 1 at 9:40 a.m. ET (6:40 a.m. PT). It was previously set for the morning of Halloween but got pushed back by a day following its test firing on Thursday.

The Space Force describes it as a classified mission.

“There will be two payloads on board this mission — a larger, unconfirmed satellite and a micro-satellite named TETRA-1,” the military said in a statement on one of its YouTube Channels. “TETRA-1 is the first in a series of prototype GEO satellites launched by the US military, which will test systems procedures for future satellites.”

The mission was originally planned for 2020, but undisclosed payload issues have delayed it multiple times. 

Falcon Heavy is essentially three Falcon 9 boosters strapped together for three times the thrust. While the configuration is less powerful than NASA’s delayed Artemis I Space Launch System or the Starship and Super Heavy will eventually be, it’s currently the most powerful operational rocket in the world. 

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A Falcon Heavy flight has the bonus spectacle of the two side boosters detaching shortly after launch and coming back for near-simultaneous landings on shore. The middle booster will be expended in the Atlantic Ocean rather than attempt a landing. 

Both SpaceX and Space Force will stream the launch.