SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy rocket is set for liftoff Tuesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the heavy-lift launcher will head on an easterly course over the Atlantic Ocean atop nearly 5 million pounds of thrust.
The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket is poised for launch from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida between 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT) at 4 p.m. EST (2100 gMT) Tuesday during a 150-minute launch window.
SpaceX will attempt to place a test payload — Elon Musk’s road-worn Tesla sports car — on an Earth escape trajectory into heliocentric orbit around the sun.
Elon Musk tweeted a graphic Tuesday illustrating the various launch and descent maneuvers planned on today’s Falcon Heavy demo flight, including recovery attempts for the three first stage boosters and payload fairing.
The timeline below outlines the launch sequence for the Falcon Heavy’s inaugural flight. A final Earth departure maneuver by the Falcon Heavy’s upper stage is planned around six hours after liftoff to send the Tesla Roadster on a path into the solar system.
The second fully commercial astronaut flight to the International Space Station will have just two opportunities to launch Sunday and Monday, or else wait until after an upcoming SpaceX resupply mission next month to deliver a new set of high-priority solar arrays to the complex.
A heavy-duty crane towering over launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in recent weeks has removed several large sections of a disused structure once needed to install satellites and space station modules into space shuttle cargo bays.
The long queue of satellites waiting on launches aboard SpaceX’s Falcon rockets — a backlog the company says is worth $7 billion — will stay grounded while investigators determine what caused a Falcon 9 booster to disintegrate after liftoff Sunday.