SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launches classified mission for US Space Force
http://www.space.com/spacex-falcon-heavy-ussf-67-mission-success
January 15, 2023
The USSF-67 mission carried a military communications satellite and five smaller payloads to orbit.
SpaceX's powerful Falcon Heavy rocket now has five flights under its belt.
A Falcon Heavy launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Sunday (Jan. 15) at 5:56 p.m. EST (2256 GMT), kicking off a classified mission for the U.S. Space Force called USSF-67.
"Liftoff of USSF-67. Go Falcon Heavy! Go Space Force!" a mission team member said over SpaceX's communications line during the launch, which the company webcast live.
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November's USSF-44 was the first Falcon Heavy mission in more than three years, a drought that was caused primarily by customer delays in getting their payloads ready for liftoff. The other three Falcon Heavy flights (in addition to USSF-44 and USSF-67) launched in June 2019, April 2019 and February 2018.
That debut liftoff, a test flight, was quite memorable. It sent SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk's red Tesla Roadster into orbit around the sun, with a spacesuit-clad mannequin named Starman at the wheel. The car will likely keep cruising through deep space for millions of years before finally slamming into Venus or Earth, orbit-modeling studies suggest.
The Falcon Heavy's 27 first-stage Merlin engines generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, according to its SpaceX specifications page. The Heavy was the most powerful rocket in operation until NASA's Artemis 1 moon mission lifted off on Nov. 16.
That flight, which sent an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back, was the debut launch for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket, which produces about 8.8 million pounds of thrust.
SpaceX could wrest the rocket-power title back from NASA soon, however. The company is gearing up for the first orbital test flight of its giant Starship Mars rocket, which will use 33 Raptor engines to roar off the pad with a mind-blowing 16 million pounds of thrust — more than any rocket ever built.
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