Page 3 - Spec Tech Vol 1 Issue 07

SpaceX rolls out Falcon Heavy rocket
ahead of Nov.1 launch
Image Credit: SpaceX via Twitter
The most powerful operational rocket in the
world is at the launch pad ahead of a
planned liftoff on Tuesday morning (Nov. 1).
SpaceX rolled its Falcon Heavy rocket out to
Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy
Space Center in Florida on Monday (Oct.
31). If all goes according to plan, the vehicle
will lift off Tuesday (Nov. 1) at 9:41 a.m. EDT
(1341 GMT), sending a handful of payloads
aloft for the U.S. Space Force on a mission
called USSF-44.
"Falcon Heavy rolling up the ramp ahead of
tomorrow’s targeted launch of the USSF-44
mission; weather is 90% favorable for
liftoff," SpaceX said via Twitter on Monday,
in a post that shared a photo of the big
rocket making the trek to the pad.
The Falcon Heavy made the journey to the
pad on its side. SpaceX lifted the rocket into
a vertical position later on Monday, after the
sun went down, as the company showed in
another tweet(opens in new tab).
The Falcon Heavy consists of three modified,
strapped-together Falcon 9 first stages. A
payload-carrying second stage sits atop the
central booster.
Space Explorer 2022
Like the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy first stages
are designed to land vertically after liftoff and
for future reuse. But on USSF-44, only the
outer two boosters will come back to Earth in
one piece.
The central booster will ditch into the sea, its
propellant tapped out by the challenging
mission, which will carry its payloads toward
distant geostationary orbit.
USSF-44 will be just the fourth-ever Falcon
Heavy mission and its first since June 2019.
The rocket has a lot of flights on its manifest;
the dry spell is primarily due to delays in the
delivery of customer satellites.
This Falcon Heavy has been at Pad 39A
before: SpaceX rolled the rocket out last week
to conduct a static fire, a routine test that
briefly ignites first-stage engines while a
vehicle remains anchored to the ground.
The static fire occurred without the USSF-44
payloads atop the rocket. After the test,
SpaceX rolled the rocket back to its hangar to
integrate the satellites, about which little is
known. (The main payload, a spacecraft called
USSF-44, is classified.)
Courtesy: Space.com
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