Cape Canaveral: The world's most powerful rocket, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, roared into space through clear blue skies on its debut test flight on Tuesday from a Florida launch site in another milestone for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's private rocket service.
The 23-storey-tall jumbo rocket, carrying a cherry red Tesla Roadster from the assembly line of Musk's electric car company as a mock payload, thundered off its launchpad in billowing clouds of steam and rocket exhaust at 2045 GMT from the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, where moon missions once began.
Boisterous cheering could be heard from SpaceX workers at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, where a livestream feed of the event originated. At least 2,000 spectators cheered the blastoff from a campground near Cocoa Beach, 8km from the space centre.
Within three minutes, the Falcon Heavy's two side boosters separated from the central rocket in one of the most critical points of the flight.
Then, capitalising on cost-cutting reusable rocket technology pioneered by SpaceX, the two boosters flew themselves back to Earth for safe simultaneous touchdowns on twin landing pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, about eight minutes after launch. Each rocket unleashed a double sonic boom as it neared the landing zone.
The center booster rocket, which SpaceX had predicted was less likely to be salvaged, slammed into the Atlantic at about 483kmph, showering the deck of the nearby drone landing vessel and destroying two of the ship's thrusters, Musk told a post-launch news conference.
Going along for the ride in a bit of playful cross-promotional space theatre was the sleek red, electric-powered sports car from Musk's other transportation enterprise, Tesla Inc.
Adding to the whimsy, SpaceX planted a space-suited mannequin in the driver's seat of the convertible Tesla Roadster. Musk mused that "it may be discovered by some future alien race". The white spacesuit was real, he said.
A third burn was successful, Musk Tweeted late on Tuesday, sending the Tesla Roadster into its planned trajectory. "Exceeded Mars orbit and kept going to the Asteroid Belt," he tweeted.
The roadster, which carries a plaque inscribed with the names of more than 6,000 SpaceX employees, could instead end up in perpetual Earth orbit. The launch followed an impressive run of successful paid missions - 20 in all since January. Reuters
