SpaceX’s fired the engines of its Falcon Heavy rocket at launch pad 39A at 12:30 p.m. EST (1730 GMT) on Wednesday. The crucial pre-launch engine test has been repeatedly delayed since the rocket returned to the launch pad earlier this month.
A classified satellite code-named Zuma, launched Sunday night atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, may have suffered a mission-ending failure during or shortly after the climb to space, according to news accounts Monday evening.
Running nearly two months late after technical concerns prevented liftoff last year, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired into the sky Sunday night from Cape Canaveral with a top secret payload for the U.S. government, the first of some 30 launches on the company’s docket in 2018.
SpaceX has released the first close-up images and video of the Falcon Heavy rocket at launch complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The rocket was rolled out on December 28, 2017 and raised vertical on the launch pad.
SpaceX’s first launch of 2018 blasted off at 8 p.m. EST Sunday (0100 GMT Monday). A Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral with a mysterious U.S. government payload known as Zuma, and the first stage returned to landing on Florida’s Space Coast around eight minutes later.
Take a look back at the Dec. 22 liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, a launch that was visible across Southern California and as far away as Arizona as the booster climbed into sunlight at dusk to deliver 10 commercial communications satellites to orbit.